Penalty of Rs 25,000 on the PIO of the CBI for delay in reply to RTI application
29 Jun, 2012The Central Information Commission has imposed a penalty of Rs 25,000/- on the Public Information Officer (PIO) of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Gandhinagar for the delay in responding to a RTI application for six months.
An employee of AIR had led the CBI to initiate an enquiry against the station director regarding four sponsored programs undertaken by AIR. He had sought details regarding the verification report that the CBI had submitted after probing the case alleging that the CDs of recording of sponsored programs were missing and were never made part of the verification record. The PIO argued before the CIC that was no intention of hiding any information from the applicant and the applicant had made multiple applications and this particular application got mixed up.
The Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra held that" The argument that it got mixed up with other similar applications and complaints is not very convincing. Every office needs to be organized in a manner that papers are kept in an orderly fashion and attended to according to their relative importance,"
The PIO’s should note that the RTI application have to be dealt with within a period of 30 days. Mixing up of the RTI applications with other such papers is not an acceptable explanation for delay.