Higher Education Director penalized under RTI Act By a Staff Reporter Sentinel Assam
GUWAHATI, June 24: Asom Chief Information Comm-issioner (CIC) RS Mooshahari has imposed a penalty at the rate of Rs 250 a day of the delayed period on Higher Education Director HK Sahoo and PIOs of his department for their alleged delay in furnishing information in response to an application submitted by a disabled youth. The penalty, however, will not exceed Rs 25,000. The CIC has imposed the penalty under Section 20(1) of the RTI Act following a hearing before the full bench of the commission last month in response to a prayer placed by Ajoy Kumar Sarmah, president of the All Assam Disabled Development Union. The commission also decided to award compensation to the complainant under Section 19(8)(b) of the Act for the harassment caused to him by the Office of the Director, Higher Education. The next hearing of the case has been fixed on July 10. Sarmah, despite being an orthopedic handicapped, had to run from pillar to post seeking information on the status of the backlog posts reserved for disabled in as many as 11 Government departments, including Higher Education Department. Sarmah had submitted his first application in this regard on July 12, 2006. The Persons with Disability Act, 1995 demands 3 per cent reservation of grade III and grade IV jobs for 3 categories of disabled orthopedic handicapped, blind and deaf and dumb (1 per cent each for each category) in Government departments. It is worth mentioning here that several disabled bodies are struggling for full implementation of the Act in Asom. The commission observes: This insensitive attitude of the Director, Higher Education, and the PSO of his office towards a member of public, particularly disabled section of the society, was highly inexcusable. The reported refusal on the part of the Director, Higher Education, to receive the application fees in cash from the petitioner, who is a disabled person, and asking him to deposit a new bank draft purely on technical ground spoke volume of the apathy of the authorities concerned, said the Commission. It further said the Higher Education Director, on one hand, informed the Commissioner and Secretary of the department on August 30 that the petitioner had not deposited the application fees and, on the other, he had sent a letter to the petitioner on the same date stating that he was not the appointing authority of the staff of universities and colleges, and that a circular had been issued to all concerned vide office letter dated April 1, 2003 for reservation of 3 per cent jobs for disabled in educational institutions, which is totally contradictory and misleading. After a prolonged agony, Sarmah allegedly got a fractured information which hardly served the purpose of his application. For instance, the information provided so far by the Higher Education Directorate shows there is no third grade and fourth grade staff in the Guwahati Commerce College and Silchar Gurucharan College, he said, while talking to The Sentinel. The information has also failed to make any mention about the number of backlog posts lying vacant in the department, he added.
