RTI-EXPOSING THE IDIOTS AND TRAITORS AMOUNG PUBLIC SERVANTS

-P M RAVINDRAN, raviforjustice@gmail.com, http://raviforjustice.blogspot.in, 14 Mar 2018

PART 3.2- THE TREACHERY AND THE TRAITORS

When the opposing party violated the Rules and the law, I filed motions. I quickly realized that the
judges would protect the opposing party and attorney no matter what, but I did not let that stop me.
Every time I filed a Motion for Sanctions and the judge denied it for bogus reasons, I had more proof
of judicial corruption. I also had another appeal. And when the appellate court protected the corrupt
judge and the corrupt attorney for the other party, I had more proof of judicial corruption. My goal
will always be to obtain as much proof as possible of the corruption.
- William M. Windsor How to Fight Judicial Corruption Tuesday, 24 May 2011 10:48
http://www.lawlessamerica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=379:how-to-
fight-judicial-corruption&catid=109:legal-options&Itemid=105

A couple of days back I received a mail from an RTI activist informing that another RTI activist has
been murdered in Gujarat taking the toll of RTI activists murdered there to 11! While any crime has to
be condemned and murder is the worst among them, I was left wondering whether the RTI Act was
still surviving in Gujarat! The Central Information Commission and the Kerala State Information have
definitely murdered the law itself. The only reason rare activists persist in using the law has been
aptly explained by William M Windsor, as quoted above. The mission statement of Save RTI Campaign
also states this in different words.

In Part 3.1 I have delved adequately into the modus operandi of the Kerala State Information
Commission and also the authorities responsible for ensuring that this Commission performs its tasks
effectively and efficiently. It has not been any better with the Central Information Commission and
the authorities responsible for ensuring that it performs its tasks effectively and efficiently.

The treason started with the first Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Wajahat Habibulla who had
been earlier a Secretary to the Government of India. He was a member of the Indian Administrative
Service (IAS) which had supposedly inherited the mantle of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) touted as the
steel frame of government administration during the colonial days! The case law I am going to
narrate will make any thinking citizen wonder if this is the quality of the steel frame of modern
government administration and whether it should continue at all!

It all started with me handing over a complaint, dated 17 Aug 2005, to the President, National
Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) on 22 Aug 2005. The complaint was against the
President of the Kerala State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (KSCDRC), Hassan Pillai, a
former judge of the Kerala High Court, who had unlawfully declared holidays for that Commission
during the summer, similar to the holidays, availed by the high court itself. A consumer organization,
Consumer Vigilance Center, Thiruvananthapuram, had taken up the matter with the Kerala High Court
where the President filed a false affidavit stating that he had not declared the holidays. He was
proved wrong and the judgment in the case had mentioned it clearly (Refer Consumer Vigilance
Center Vs State of Kerala, 2004(3) KLT 1073. But except for the holidays not materializing no action
had been taken against the President who was actually guilty of perjury! Since in earlier complaints
against the Commission the Government of Kerala had taken the stand that the administrative
control of the state commission was vested with the national commission this complaint was
submitted to the national commission on behalf of the Save Consumer Courts Action Council, a
collective of consumer organizations in the State. The complaint was handed over to the President, M
B Shah, former judge of the apex court, personally and it had been accepted after all his queries had
been satisfactorily answered. But, as it usually happens with these public authorities, there was no
action taken and no response either! So the matter was pursued under the RTI Act. A simple
application to provide information on action taken on the complaint got an irrelevant reply that the
matter should be taken up with the Government of Kerala! Since this was certainly not the
information sought the matter was taken up with the Central Information Commission. And horror of
horrors, a complaint against a delinquent central public authority to the Central Information
Commission was forwarded to the Kerala State Information Commission for further action! The
matter was taken up with the CIC, Wajahat Habibullah, through e mail and promptly got a reply that
the matter will be looked into. On getting no further communication even after considerable lapse of
time, copy of the complaint was resend to the CIC. And again, it was also forwarded to the KSIC! And
it was then that a complaint was submitted to the President of India to remove the CIC under the
provisions of Sec 14(3)(d) of the RTI Act which states that ‘the President may by order remove from
office the Chief Information Commissioner or any Information Commissioner if the Chief Information
Commissioner or a Information Commissioner, as the case may be, is, in the opinion of the President,
unfit to continue in office by reason of infirmity of mind or body’ (For details please see the copy of
the complaint at http://raviforjustice.blogspot.com/2012/01/rti-old-application-to-president-to.html
. Needless to say nothing happened on that also!

In the Judges’ assets case also Wajahat Habibulla can be seen flouting the law he was tasked,
empowered, equipped and paid to enforce. Firstly, in the decision of 6/1/2009, in Appeal No
CIC/WB/A/2008/00426 it is stated that the full bench of the Commission heard the matter on
5/11/2008 but it has been signed by only 3 ICs including the CIC. Now, the RTI Act doesn’t make any
difference between ‘single bench’ and ‘multi bench’ of the Commission. So the lack of confidence of
the CIC in dealing with the matter alone should be seen as his lack of competence arising from the
ignorance of the law itself which he is expected to be totally conversant with. And even the multi-
member bench could only decide that the information sought needed to be provided. They failed to
take cognizance of the fact that even if the information was provided on their directions the period
for imposing the maximum penalty of Rs 25,000/- on the defaulting PIO had been long over on
15/3/2008. They also directed the wrong PIO to provide the information sought and not the actual
custodian of the information sought who is the deemed PIO in this case! And this deemed PIO being
the CJI himself it was required that the penalty of Rs 25000/- was imposed on K G Balakrishnan, the
then CJI, for failing to provide the information sought within the prescribed period of 30 days, that is
by 9/12/2007. It would be the height of naivety to believe that the PIO of the Supreme Court Registry
was not aware of Sec 5(4) and 5(5) of the RTI Act and could not seek the assistance of the CJI who was
the de facto custodian of the information sought. Worse thing is that in spite of the multi bench
decision of the information commission the PIO only sought to prolong the case by appealing to a
single bench and later to a division bench of the Delhi High Court. The matter is now pending before
the apex court itself! And knowledgeable citizens have been asking how the apex court could sit in
judgment in a case involving itself as a defendant. But one positive fall out has been that at the
initiative of a couple of judges of some high courts not merely the information sought-whether judges
are submitting their property returns to the CJI/CJs of high courts – but the contents of the returns
themselves are now available in public domain!

The best decision I have received from an IC is that of Annapurna Dixit of the Central Information
Commission in an appeal, No CIC/OK/A/2008/00766-AD. Through the application I had submitted on
1/10/2007 I had sought information on the railway over bridges being constructed in the original
Palakkad Division of the Southern Railways. The original Palakkad Division had been divided into
Palakkad and Salem divisions and the application was submitted to the PIO, Palakkad Division. Suffice
to say that the information was not provided in time and quite a bit of it was provided on 25/5/2009
just one day before the hearing on the 2nd appeal, through video conference, scheduled for 26 May
2009. The IC while ordering provision of the remaining information and issuing notice to the PIO on
imposing penalty also directed the public authority to pay a compensation of Rs 1000/- stating as
much as ‘ It is the Commission’s considered opinion that ‘public interest’ is central to democracy and
the nature of government itself and that the Appellant has suffered detriment in pursuit of an
important issue in the interest of ‘general welfare’ and ‘common well being’ in terms of physical and
mental harassment which he had to undergo and also of expenses incurred by him on stationery and
on secretarial assistance.’ But by an adjunct, dated 16 Jun 2009, to this decision the IC imposed a
penalty of only Rs 7000/- taking into consideration the period from her decision (dated 19/5/2009,
but please do not ask me how the decision was published on 19/5/2009 when the 1st hearing itself
had been conducted on 25/5/2009) to 16/6/2009 (the date of hearing on the notice for imposing
penalty and confirming compliance with her earlier decision) though the delay had to be calculated
from 9/11/2007 (40 days from the date of submission of application including 5 days for transfer and
5 days for transit.) More details of this case is available at
http://www.slideshare.net/raviforjustice/the-best-order-by-an-information-commissioner-under-the-
right-to-information-act

After four years I sought an update on the information provided on 12/6/2009, based on the decision
of Annapurna Dixit. The application was submitted on 19/9/13 and on not getting any reply the 1 st
appeal was submitted on 18/11/13. Again there was no response and the 2nd appeal was submitted
on 19/01/2014. Vijai Sharma, the then CIC decided the appeal, No.CIC/VS/ A/2014/000322, on
8/7/15. The decision was shockingly wrong right from recording of the facts to the deductions and
the decision. He had wrongly recorded that the CPIO had responded on 4/10/2013. He had
completely overlooked the information sought in para 2 of the application- Please provide the status
as on 31 Aug 2013 for all the ROB/RUB in that list. (The reference of the list was given in para 1 as Ref
your letter No W351/1/1/CN/P1/117 dated 12/6/2009). Even the information sought in para 3 –
additional details about the RoB at ser 76 of the list-had not been provided to me but the CIC was just
informed that the RoB was opened and tough that was not, repeat not, the information sought, he
presumes it to be complete and end of the issue(s). He also failed to take cognizance of the
information sought at para 4 of the application-about additional RoBs/RuBs-sanctioned after the
earlier information was provided. At least to my mind this CIC should not have been employed even
as a Class IV employee in any government office. For more details see my blog at
http://raviforjustice.blogspot.in/2015/08/prosecute-vijay-sharma-chief.html

It is not only Vijay Sharma and the above case that established the fact that the ICs do not even go
through the complaint/appeal submitted by the citizens through pain staking effort.

Shailesh Gandhi was a rare case of an RTI activist getting appointed as an IC with the Central
Information Commission and he is credited with a few good decisions besides raising the benchmark
for disposal of cases. One of his most important decisions was in the matter of Sec of 6(3) of RTI Act
mandating PIOs, who do not have all the information sought, to forward the application to the PIOs
of such public authorities who hold those information. However the language used in the Act being
singular the PIOs were taking advantage of it to deny information sought. And the Department of
Personnel and Training, the nodal department of the Government of India for implementing the law,
had aggravated the problem by issuing an Office Memorandum, No F 1O/2/2008-lR dated 24 Sep
2010 directing, in effect, to bury Sec 6(3) of the law. Shailesh Gandhi while deciding Appeal No
CIC/SM/A/2011/000278/SG on 16 Jun 2011 has quoted the General Clauses Act and enough case laws
of the apex court to clarify that Sec 6(3) has to be applied even in cases where the application will
have to be transferred to more than one other public authority. But even he floundered when
deciding an appeal against the PIO of the Central Information Commission itself, who had failed to
provide info on the action taken and status of 4 appeals pending with the Commission for almost a
year. He just proved the truism in Schopenhauer's Law of Entropy which states that ‘If you put a
spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage you get sewage.’ For more details please visit the blog
http://raviforjustice.blogspot.in/2012/06/rti-act-shailesh-gandhi-and.html
In the above case, of the 4 appeals whose status was sought, two had been submitted under a proper
covering letter indicating that there were two appeals and both pertained to the State Bank of India.
While one of the appeals was decided by the then CIC, A N Tiwari, on 8/12/2010, the other has not
been disposed of till now though by the work allotment at Central Information Commission, the same
IC should have decided that appeal also at the same time. But that is only if he, or even his
subordinates, had at least browsed through the pages of the documents submitted!

The judiciary never needed a law like the RTI Act to get exposed as a failed and corrupt institution.
But how it has tried to subvert the RTI Act by introducing exorbitant fee/cost and even introducing a
fee for 1st appeal has been dealt with in Part 2 of this series. While some corrections have been made
to those, one sore point that is persisting is the exemption of the judicial part of the court functions
from the purview of the RTI Act. In fact even copies of court orders are denied on the specious
ground that they are part of the judicial proceedings. In a particular petition I had filed with the High
Court of Kerala when the order was delivered almost after 3 years, it simply stated that the matter
had been decided in OP 31427/2000 and hence this petition is dismissed. When I sought a copy of the
decision in OP 31427/2000 it was simply rejected because it is part of judicial proceedings!

In another important case, involving the decision of the Kerala High Court holding bandhs illegal, and
which decision was upheld by the apex court also, I sought copies of these orders from the Home
Department of the Govt of Kerala. It again got transferred to various other departments, including
Law, from where it was transferred to the High Court itself. No prize for guessing what was the reply
from the PIO of the high court.

At times, some helpful PIO informs that the information (copy of the orders) is on the web site
whereas it seems to be hiding from anyone looking for it. The same thing had happened in the case of
the orders on bandhs with could only be searched using catch word bandh and the response was ‘no
results’. In any case it had been reported in the New Indian Express of 13/1/15 that the Delhi High
Court had ruled that RTI Act can be used even if info is available through other means.

Here are a couple of case studies involving our apex court/high courts and the RTI Act.

In what is popularly known as Namit Sharma case, a single bench of Swatantar Kumar of the apex
court, on 13/9/2012, wanted the information commissions to work in benches with one of them
being a judicial member whose appointment should be made in consultation with the CJI or CJ of the
respective high courts! (Remember how the apex court institutionalized the Collegium by giving a
new meaning to the simple term ‘consultation’ used in Article 124 of the Constitution?). Thanks to
opposition from all possible quarters this part of the order was stayed by a division bench of A K
Patnaik and A K Sikri on 16/4/2013. But till then, presumably, the information commissioners and
their staff should have had a long holiday at the tax payers’ cost. Further, on 3/9/2013, the same
division bench, quoting Order XL of Supreme Court Rules 1966, recalled the original judgment stating
‘this Court can review its judgment or order on the ground of error apparent on the face of record
and on an application for review can reverse or modify its decision on the ground of mistake of law or
fact. As the judgment under review suffers from mistake of law, we allow the Review Petitions, recall
the directions and declarations in the judgment under review and dispose of Writ Petition (C) No. 210
of 2012’.

We also have an interesting case in Writ Petition No. 478 of 2008 and Writ Petition No. 237 of 2011
decided together by a division bench of D.G. Karnik and F.M. Reis of the High Court of Mumbai at Goa
on 14 Nov 2011. The argument of the petitioners in both the cases was that the Governor of Goa was
not a public authority. Thankfully both the Goa State Information Commission and the High Court
ruled this out. But two conclusions of the high court are interesting: one, the relationship between the
President of India and the Governor of a State is not fiduciary and two, the State Information
Commission has to be a multi-member body consisting of the State Chief Information Commissioner
and at least one (but not exceeding ten) State Information Commissioner/s. The State Information
Commission cannot function only with one member.

So much for the rule of law and the whimsical decisions of our honorable judges!