The government owes over Rs 110 crore to cash-strapped Air India for its special flights which ferry VVIPs including the President and the Prime Minister on their visits abroad which it is trying hard to realize.

The national carrier, which is facing a financial crunch, has pending bills of 12 special flights for the President, the vice-president and the Prime Minister which amount to over Rs 110 crore, an RTI reply from the carrier said. It said during July last year, the total outstanding bills were Rs 291 crore.

"Out of the above amount, recently the government has paid Rs 181.30 crore leaving a balance outstanding amount of Rs 110.60 crore," the reply said. The records show that two bills of are pending with the defence ministry for the abroad travel of the President to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Damascus and Aleppo during November 20-30, 2010, which is Rs 14.5 crore and another to Paro via Bagdogra which is Rs 4.45 crore. The bill to Paro, Bhutan is nearly three years old, the reply dated December 28, 2011 said.

Five bills worth Rs 55.81 crore are pending with the Cabinet Secretariat for the travel of the PM to Huahin, Thailand during October 23-25, 2009, to Paro, Bhutan during April 27-30, to Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi during October 23-30, 2010, to Seoul during November 9-12, 2010 and to Brussels and Berlin during December 8-12, 2010.

One outstanding bill for the travel of the vice-president to Male, Maldives is pending since November, 2008. The total bill for this trip was Rs 2.77 crore of which part payment was done leaving an outstanding of Rs 39 lakh.

With complaints of arbitrariness in hearing of cases piling up, the Central Information Commission last week began listing out pending cases before each commissioner on its website. Cases pending before chief information commissioner Satyananda Mishra and information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi have already been uploaded while the other commissioners are likely to follow soon. This is the first time that an information commission has displayed at least a partial list of cases pending before it.

Speaking about the move, Mishra said, "This is an added advantage to the public. Other commissioners will also put up their list of pending cases but we have not set a time frame." CIC has a pendency of 22,000 cases with about 2,500 cases added every month. The decision was prompted by an RTI application that sought information on the status of a case filed a year ago. Information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said that in replying to the decision, the commission realized that the case was over a year old and was inadvertently left out of the cause list.

"I realized that if a mistake had been made in one case, it could have been made in some others as well. A careful search of 2010 cases revealed another 110 cases which had been forgotten and missed completely," Gandhi said. In fact, one of the cases related to the widow of a government employee and her struggle to get pension that only ended 17 years later.

The 'List of pending cases' has been displayed on the CIC website and will be updated every month. Gandhi said, "CIC is only six years old and this will be an opportunity for us to correct mistakes and also reassure citizens that there is fairness in taking up their cases. In most commissions and judicial bodies, citizens suspect arbitrariness and corruption in the listing of cases. The simple act of listing all pending cases publicly will go a long way in restoring citizens' confidence in these institutions, and also act as self- regulating check."

The Delhi High Court has dismissed a plea under the transparency law for disclosure of selection norms and appointment process in the country's internal intelligence agency, Intelligence Bureau (IB). A bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi rejected the plea by an unsuccessful IB job aspirant, dismissing his accusation that IB selection process was plagued by corruption.

"It appears that the selection process has been conducted in a transparent manner, and there is nothing to indicate any corruption in the said process," Justice Sanghi said. The high court's order came on an appeal by IB job aspirant Ravinder Kumar Kataria, challenging the Central Information Commission's June 2011 order, dismissing his plea earlier for disclosure of selection process and norms in IB. Kataria had alleged he could not be selected for the post of Junior Intelligence Officer (JIO) in IB in 2009 due to corruption.

The court accepted the Union Home Ministry's argument that Kataria is a Scheduled Caste (SC) candidate and there were 17 posts reserved for SC category. All posts have been filled and the petitioner had scored lesser marks than the candidate last recruited in SC category, while the cut-off marks for the general category were substantially higher, the ministry told the court, seeking dismissal of Kataria's plea.

Kataria had approached the CIC after the Public Information Officer (PIO) had rejected his query saying Section 24 of the RTI Act exempts the intelligence and security agencies from the Right to Information Act's purview. The CIC had rejected Kataria argument that the information sought by him did not pertain to IB's functioning and merely pertained to the recruitment process for public employment by the agency and so the said information should be given to him.

The Railway Board’s director of safety Ashish Merhotra, while replying to an RTI query said, “Only consequential accidents involving loss of life or grievous injury or loss of property worth Rs2 crore or interruption to through traffic above the threshold value are reportable to the board”.

Although it would be hard to remember; till September, Indian Railways has suffered 61 ‘major’ accidents, an RTI query has revealed. But the numbers have gone down steadily with time.

However, the Railway Board doesn’t maintain information separately for the performance under every minister. RTI activist Subhas Chandra Agrawal’s application got the following response from the Railway Board’s director of safety Ashish Merhotra: “Data of all major and minor accidents are not maintained. Only consequential accidents involving loss of life or grievous injury or loss of property worth Rs2 crore or interruption to through traffic above the threshold value are reportable to the board. Details regarding consequential train accidents are not maintained separately for tenure of each minister.”

This year, till September, there have been five cases of collisions, 28 derailments, 26 level crossing accidents, and two instances of fire. Last year, it totalled to 141 accidents, the year before that, it was 165.

On the positive side, however, the number of accidents seems to have come down over the years. In 1960-61 there were 2,131 accidents, including 1,415 derailments and 405 fires in trains. By 1970-71, the number had more than halved to 840. At the turn of the century, there were 473 accidents, and it dropped further.

Information on train accidents before 1960 is not available though. When Lal Bahadur Shastri was serving as the railway minister, prior to becoming prime minister, he had resigned in 1956 when a railway accident in Madhunagar claimed 112 lives. Though his resignation was not accepted by Jawaharlal Nehru, three months later he put down his papers following another accident in Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu that saw 144 deaths.

Engineers, Who Met Online, Set Up Website To Protect Information Seekers From Attack


In an encouraging fillip for the Right To Information movement, a citizens’ initiative launched online allows applicants a shield of anonymity while seeking information from any public agency. The initiative operating under the ‘RTI Anonymous’ banner was floated on October 15 by three engineering professionals and comes at a time when transparency movements both in India and abroad are fighting for survival as information seekers are forced to work in an environment of growing hostility and resistance.

Earlier this week, citing financial reasons, whistleblower website Wikileaks announced that it would temporarily stop publishing secret government files. Closer home Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently suggested that RTI was interfering with the working of the government. Attacks on information seekers have become commonplace, with transparency groups estimating that 28 activists have been killed since the RTI Act was passed in 2005.

For NRI Anand Sharma, web-designer from Delhi Avnish Singh, and IIT-Kharagpur student Ritesh Singh, it was the murder of RTI activist Shehla Masood which served as a wake-up call. Strangers to each other till social activist Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption movement brought them together on common online fora, the trio decided to move beyond the agitation, pool in their expertise and lift the shadow of fear enveloping the RTI.

“The three of us were on a common social networking group and would post our opinions on what should be done next. This led to online chats and conference calls during which we realized that people who dared to stand up against corruption were being victimized,” recalls Sharma, an engineer working in the US. Given their technical know-how, setting up a website to facilitate RTIs for applicants who didn’t want to reveal their identity seemed the most logical step. The website, getup4change.org, allows anyone to log on and draft an RTI on the site or email the group using a dummy email ID. The trio and their informal network of volunteers take over from there.

“We file the RTI through random volunteers, who are based in different parts of India, thereby completely bypassing the possibility of any victimization. For instance, a volunteer in Delhi with a legitimate Delhi address files an RTI for an issue concerning Bangalore authorities,” explains Ritesh (19), adding that fellow-IITians have been volunteering to file the RTIs. Activists are more susceptible to attacks if they are within “geographical limits of the authorities they are seeking information for”. Dispersing the network of applicants, thus offers some degree of protection to information seekers.

Within two weeks of its launch, the group has drawn 35 volunteers including retired public information officers and received 105 applications on subjects varying from the spending of Parliamentarians to the illegal quota of liquor shops in Karnataka and misuse of funds in MP.

Calling the initiative a good idea, chief information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said that the protection of whistleblowers has been a growing concern. “Such initiatives will ultimately strengthen the RTI movement. The only challenge is that information officers are unlikely to reveal sensitive information at the first go and the group would need to pursue matters diligently,” he cautioned. The challenges are evident. The website has in fact already faced a hacking attempt.

HOW IT WORKS

 
l RTI applicants can log on to www(dot)getup4change(dot)org
l Click on the ‘Submit RTI’ link to file a Right To Information application
l Users can also send an email with a dummy email ID, if they wish
l The team files the RTI through their network of volunteers at no cost to the applicants
l Applicants can choose to be appraised on the progress of their application via email
l The information or document is put up on the site once obtained
l The group has no details of applicants. So, identity of information seekers is protected

FREEDOM UNDER THREAT

Attacks on information seekers have become commonplace with transparency groups estimating that 28 activists have been killed since the RTI Act was passed in 2005
OCTOBER 2011 | Two Goan RTI activists, Derrick Dias (61) and Ganasham Kunkolkar (42) have been repeatedly attacked following their complaint against illegal motor garages
AUGUST 2011 | Environmental activist Shehla Masood (35) was shot dead in Bhopal while she was on her way to a rally in support of Anna Hazare
AUGUST 2010 | Activist Ramdas Ghadegaonkar was killed in Nanded after his RTI exposed irregularities in fuel and grain allocation under the public distribution system
MAY 2010 | Social activist Dattatreya Patil, who used the RTI to expose fake registration of handloom societies in Maharashtra, was killed in the textile town of Ichalkaranji
JANUARY 2010 | Whistleblower Satish Shetty who had exposed a series of land scams in the areas of Pimpri-Chinchwad, Talegaon and Lonavala was killed in Pune while he was taking a morning walk

The RTI is a landmark initiative in Indian democracy. It is unfortunate that activists and information seekers using this rightful transparency tool have been victimized and many have even lost their lives. It is time the government passes a legislation for the protection of whistleblowers.

The state should also be more proactive with its disclosures. Making citizens run around for information that is rightfully theirs is inexcusable. Any effort to dilute the RTI should be vehemently opposed.

In 2005, India’s government, led by the Congress Party, passed the long overdue Right to Information Act. Today, the act is an invaluable tool that grants every citizen of India timely responses to queries relating to any public body. It has been used an impressive 600,000 times, and an equally impressive 90% of the applications have been disposed of. Over 400,000 of these applications have been from rural India, with over 35% coming from Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) of society. It is clear that the act has empowered millions of previously marginalized and muted citizens.

Disturbingly, but unsurprisingly, certain elements in the political establishment now want to reduce the scope of the act.

It is a well accepted fact that corruption in India is endemic. It is prevalent from the lowest echelons of officialdom (with traffic police known to accept the equivalent of a $1 bribe to overlook a speeding violation), to the highest (one of the raging political controversies today involves politicians granting of telecom licenses at billions of dollars below their market values). While the former fosters a general atmosphere of petty lawlessness, the latter implies a monumental loss to the exchequer, funds that should have been used for public purposes. 

Over the last year however, the RTI Act has aided the uncovering of a large number of political and economic scams and frauds, with judicial proceedings being initiated against high-ranking political dignitaries. If these cases can be taken to their legal conclusions and the guilty brought to book, it would signify a promising new era for a country that has struggled under the weight of bureaucratic and financial irregularities.

The arguments for limiting the scope of the act range from the barely logical (the selection of national sportsmen should be exempt from RTI on the grounds that full disclosure may foster bad blood between competitors for a particular spot) to the diabolical (exemption of the National Nuclear Safety Authority). Further, some of the suggested limitations are downright ludicrous; for example, it is unclear why RTI Applications should be restricted to 150 or 250 words. Presumably parliament now functions via Twitter.

The RTI Act was landmark legislation for India and has helped create the image of a modernizing democratic country. Curtailing it now, in addition to safeguarding those who have abused the lack of accountability that existed previously, would be cowardly and calamitous.

The Bihar government will provide a copy of the Right to Information (RTI) Act in Braille for the benefit of visually impaired people in the state, officials said Thursday, describing it as a first for the country.

An official of the Bihar State Information Commission (BSIC) said the Nitish Kumar government had initiated the move to help visually challenged people in understanding the act and the rules. "The commission will distribute the copies of the RTI Act in Braille script among visually impaired people to create awareness and to provide them an opportunity to use it for their benefit," an official said. The commission has also decided to accept applications submitted in Braille.

According officials of the BSIC, there are one million visually impaired people in Bihar but not one had turned up with an RTI application in the last five years.

BSIC has approached the Dehradun-based National Institute of Visually Handicapped for getting Braille copies of the act and the rules in Hindi and English. It has also requested the institute to prepare audio versions.

Officials said the institute has a huge press where books in Braille script are printed. Neither the Central Information Commission nor any state information commission has so far taken the initiative to print the RTI Act in Braille, an official said.