State information commission warns HUDA against dodging RTI queries
24 Aug, 2013
An application was filed with the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) administrator, Gurgaon under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking his reply about the poor quality of road work and rain harvesting work carried out under his office jurisdiction. The application also sought to know about the actions taken by the administrator for quality control of ongoing works.
The application was forwarded by the office of Gurgaon HUDA administrator to the superintendent engineers, HUDA circle I and II and executive engineer HUDA Division II. The superintending engineer, HUDA, Circle I and II, in turn, transferred the application to the executive engineer, HUDA, Division Nos. I, II, III, IV, V and VI.
However, the applicant didn’t receive any response from the administrator's office or from the other offices where the application was transferred to even after he had filed the first appeal.
As the matter was brought before the Haryana State Information Commission (SIC), it noted that information was asked specifically from the state public information office (PIO) of Gurgaon HUDA administrator but he wrongly transferred it to other departments. The SIC has warned the HUDA against unnecessarily transferring the RTI queries from one department to another and has directed the administrator to provide the demanded information to the applicant within two weeks and also to file a compliance report with the commission.