Dear Group Members On 17 August 2009 at 4:00 PM, another "Full Bench" will take place on the vexed 7(3) issue. This time so many people have been called that an auditorium has been booked.
At issue here is the age old internal political battle WITHIN the CIC. This time round we have IC(AT) and IC(SM) arranged against C'IC (WH) &Co. The core issue is if public authorities charge citizens arbitrary "further fees representing the cost of providing information" This issue was decided by DoPT as far back as 2007 IN FAVOUR OF CITIZENS, and the circular was issued and published on DoPT website. http://persmin.gov.in/WriteData/CircularNotification/ScanDocument/RTI/1_8_2007_IR.pdf "15. The applicant may also be required to pay further fee towards the cost of providing the information, details of which shall be intimated to the applicant by the CPIO as prescribed by the Right to information (Regulation of Fee and Cost) Rules, 2005. rates of fees as prescribed in the Rules are given below:" (It goes on to give the Rs.2 per page, free inspection, Rs.50 per diskette etc etc.) It is pertinent that circular this was notified by IC(Satyanand Mishra) At the last Full Bench hearing IC(SM) stuck to this line - ie cheap information for citizens (no arbitrary demands like Rs.800 per day employee cost to locate records etc.) Unfortunately powerful NGO forces which exert pressure in the CIC dont want all this (ie. cheap information for all ordinary citizens - they only want information to be collected by Govt and given to them free of cost to run their own RTI businesses). Some of these people, like Ms Aruna Roy, openly lobby for big business interests/PSUs at the CIC and DoPT (or so I am told) and got Mr H to alter the decision taken at the last meeting. To obfuscate matters about 20+ PSUs have been impleaded to put in counter arguments. It is pertinent that none of them had responded to a previous public notice. The only 2 people who had replied to that notice (I and another) are still not formally impleaded in the matter but are allowed to attend as observers. Other people who have pending cases at CIC on the same issue and who have requested impleadment are not being impleaded as parties either. The Appellant Mr K.K.Kishore has never entered appearance in this matter at CIC, and it would have been a cakewalk for the anti-RTI forces at CIC had I not intervened by replying to that public notice. What is also scandalous in this whole affair is that IC(SM) was later DROPPED from the Full Bench and replaced by Ms. Aruna Roy's pet poodle Shailesh Gandhi. We can now expect a thoroughly bad / anti-citizen order from the CIC on 7(3) unless IC(AT) and IC(SM) are added to this bench to balance it out. Who knows this may be the first "case" at CIC with divided "judgements". Sarbajit
