Retired CBI Officials escape from penalty by CIC
22 Mar, 2013An application was filed with the Central bureau of Investigation (CBI) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to know the details of action taken report on a complaint filed earlier by the applicant in which he had alleged the involvement of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and other functionaries in corruption pertaining to the commonwealth games (CWG) organized in Delhi. As the applicant didn’t receive the reply to the application within the stipulated time, he had finally approached the Central Information Commission (CIC) for grievance redressal.
During the hearing of the case, the CBI admitted that the delay was caused by its Anti Corruption Branch (ACB) which tried to deal with both the complaint and the RTI application simultaneously. The CBI also submitted that the then Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of ACB had died and other officials dealing with the case had retired.
The CIC, in its judgment, stated that clubbing RTI application with complaint o the same topic is not a convincing explanation for the delay. However, as the officials guilty of delay are no longer in service, the case was closed without imposing any penalty on them. Furhter, the CIC asked the PIOs to take lesson not to merge RTI application with other complaints as the response to the RTI application is time bound.