One may not believe it; but it is true incident. The SPIO of the Village Office, Tellichery, Kerala made his own interpretation that the Rs.10/- prescribed is for providing information is only orally and if an applicant want this information in writting he has to pay the additional charges of Rs.2/- prescribed in the Rules for providing it in an paper failing which the applicant can get the information only on oral communication from the SPIO. In the entire state of Kerala no one make such an interpretation and this was an isolated case. None of the PAs including District Collectorate, Government Secretariate or even the SPIO of SIC, Kerala make any such claim.
The issue was reported to Ms Ishitha Roy, IAS District Collector, Kannur whom I have not seen disagreeing with the plea of her subordinate staff in any issue - even in serious case of corruption with documentary evidences . As expected she has sided with the above PIO affirming that his interpretation was correct though the Collectorate itself did not resort to such unlawful method. On seeing such gross failure of District Administration, I had reported this in person to Sri.Palat Mohandas, SIC, Kerala when he visitted this place. As usual he could not answer this. Fully anticipatting this habit of his I was ready with a written plea. He had promissed to reply me soon when he reach back at Trivandrum. .To day I received his reply in his No1112/SIC-Gen2/2009 dated 20-3-2009. It says that: *"Vide letter cited you have informed the Commission that the Village Officer, Tellicherry has demanded Rs.12/-instead of Rs.10/- as fee to provide the informatrion if the applicant need the information in writting, contray to the provision of the Right to Information Act. In this instance the said demand though unlawful, Commission cannot take up the issue until and unless it is challenged either in a Complaint petition or in an Appeal Petition and only when it comes up for the consideration of the commission. Only the appropriate government can take steps to curb these kind of practices*. " The pity is that he accepted it as unlawful but plead that he is helpless. I feel pity that a former Chief Secretary of this State(more or less the highest office) is so helpless to initiate action against a Village Oficer (the lowest head of office) despite provisions contained in Section 18(1)(f) and 18(2) of the Act. More than 20 second appeals/complaints of mine including PIOs not obeying SICs orders etc being pending with him since 2 years, I delibertely did not make a complainant in the prescribed format as it was not likely to be considered in 2 years. I was wanting urgent action . One should remember that this is a complaint I made to him in open assembly when he has asked the cityzens in public meetting to project problems if any faced in connection with RTI and I have projected the above problem. I had followed it with a written a DO letter to him with copy to Ms. Ishita Roy, IAS District Collector. I think this should be good enough for him to apprise the correct cituation to the District Collector and sort out the guilty. But either he is ignorant or scared . IThe SIC is not able to sort out such basic issues, the District Collector in person is not able to do and thye want to approach government directly for such a simple unlawful butchery of the RTI Act by the lowest government servant. , Of cource our media like "The Hindu" does not care about such complaint but only interestted in repeating that "The RTI Act is being misused" and "The public neeedawarenes of RTI Act. Any solution ? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
