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Thursday, January 12, 2006

DERC faces contempt petition [Sarbajit Roy]

Sarbajit files a contempt petition in Supreme Court of India

DERC faces contempt petition
NIDHI SHARMA
[ Saturday, December 10, 2005 01:14:16 am TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: A contempt petition has been filed against Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) for not directing private power companies to disconnect electricity connections of illegal industrial units running in non-conforming residential areas in the Capital.

The petition was filed after the fire mishap in a Vishwas Nagar factory on Wednesday which was triggered by a short-circuit.

On May 7, 2004, Supreme Court had given Delhi government a time-frame to close down illegal industrial units that had come up after August 1, 1990.

The order was clear: water and electricity connections of the industrial units found operating after the due date of closure (the last deadline was November 8, 2004) had to be disconnected.

The deadline for disconnection was December 8, 2004. According to statistics of Delhi Pollution Control Committee, the number of illegal industrial units that had come up after the 1990 cut-off date was about 51,000 in 1990 but had increased to 1.01 lakh by 1995.

Official figures provided by the industries department show that only 2,673 water and electricity connections have been disconnected.

The petition points out that despite the court orders, the private power companies were not directed to disconnect connections of illegal units.

The drive against illegal industrial units was also carried out by SDMs and not the companies. The petitioner, Sarbajit Roy, has said: "The power companies have earned profits worth Rs 2,000 crore because of not initiating a drive against illegal industries.

The contempts, which have commenced from December 9, 2004 and which are still going on, have seriously affected the administration...and deprived the residents of Delhi from their lawful entitlements to electricity."

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Sarbajit and his multicoloured RTI raincoat

Sarbajit Roy gets results on opening day :-)

First proceeding under RTI Act
Manoj Mitta
[ Saturday, December 24, 2005 01:55:08 am TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: The first ever quasi judicial proceedings under the Right to Information Act 2005 kicked off on a propitious note as a public authority readily agreed to mend its ways and give information to citizens without asking questions.

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA), represented by its vice-chairman Dinesh Rai, told the Central Information Commission (CIC) that it would shortly revise the format of its existing application form to bring it in line with the RTI Act, so that no citizen has to give any explanation for why he is seeking information.

In another far-reaching reform, the DDA said that each of its 40 public information officers would, in keeping with the RTI Act, be directed to accept any application for information regardless of whether the subject pertained to him or not.

The CIC also forced the DDA to admit that its website does not comply with the RTI mandate of making a pro-active disclosure in form of 17 manuals on different aspects of the organisation.

The concessions wrested from the DDA at its very first hearing may help the two-month-old CIC establish its credentials as the independent appellate body envisaged by the RTI Act.

It is still too early to say whether the CIC packed with ex-babus really has the will to thwart the covert and not so covert attempts by the bureaucracy to hide information from citizens.

In keeping with its stated policy of transparency, the CIC took the unusual step of allowing TV cameras to capture the proceedings in the face of objections from DDA officials.

At the end of a two-hour public hearing, the CIC gave a fortnight to the DDA to explain why it had withheld from an applicant, Sarbajit Roy, the public feedback on the proposed Master Plan for Delhi-2021.

The first hearing, however, had its share of teething problems. For one, the room available with the CIC to hold its public hearings turned out to be too small.

In fact, the CIC, currently housed in the old campus of JNU, has already put out an advertisement to lease a larger and more centrally located premises.

The CIC also admitted that it should not have in the very instance summoned the head of the DDA. It is likely that for future hearings, the CIC will summon only the public information officer of the department concerned to respond to the grievances of the applican

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RTI: Depts have put up manuals online

More on Sarbajit Roy and his Right to Information Complaint against DDA

RTI: Depts have put up manuals online
Manoj Mitta
[ Friday, December 23, 2005 02:20:21 amTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: The first-ever hearing by Central Information Commission on a particular matter is going to decide how much water does the RTI law hold.

The RTI law specially provides that where the information sought for "concerns the life or liberty of a person, the same shall be provided within 48 hours of the receipt of the request".

This implies that public information officers will have to attend to such urgent requests even on weekends and holidays. Most departments have made no arrangement yet for complying with this statutory requirement.

The most commonly flouted provision of the RTI Act is the one that prescribes that each department should maintain 17 manuals in the public domain to usher in greater transparency in the functioning of the government.

The departments that have put such manuals on their websites can be counted on fingertips. Each of these omissions and commissions on the part of bureaucracy have been highlighted by the complaint filed before Central Information Commission by a Delhi-based engineer, Sarbajit Roy.

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Central Information Commission to hear first case Friday

Sarbajit Roy's RTI Test Case will have its first hearing on Friday 23-December-2005

Central Information Commission to hear first case Friday
New Delhi | December 22, 2005 2:15:06 PM IST

It will be a baptism of sorts for the newly formed Central Information Commission when it hears its first case under the Right to Information Act Friday.

"It's about procedural matters of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). The appellant has said that the mechanism of providing information by the DDA is inadequate," India's first Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah told IANS.

This will be the first appeal case after the RTI Act was enacted Oct 12 and the Central Information Commission was set up.

"It will help us clarify a lot of issues. I don't know whether there was any offence against the RTI Act which the appellant (he didn't mention the name) has accused the DDA of," Habibullah, a retired officer of the Indian Administrative Service, said.

The full five-member commission that also includes O.P.Kejriwal, Padma Balasubramanian, M.M. Ansari and A.N. Tiwari will hear the case.

"This will set a precedent for hearing such cases by the commission," Habibullah pointed out.

The veteran bureaucrat also disclosed the modus operandi on appeal cases to be heard by the commission. The procedure was finalised over a week ago.

"We have assigned various ministries to different commissioners. The appeal, depending on which ministry it pertains to, will first come to one commissioner," he said.

"If the commissioner rejects the appeal, he will ask for the assistance of another commissioner. If the two differ, then they will place the matter before the multi-member commission," Habibullah explained.

"The first court is the public information officer of the ministry. And the first court of appeal lies with the ministry. The commission is the final court of appeal," he clarified.

The commission is, however, still in the process of evolving practices and procedures to deal with cases where information has been denied or adequate information has not given to a person.

Fiercely defending the independence and integrity of the commission, Habibullah, an advocate of transparent governance, said: "The commission is being set up outside the government. The commission can ask any papers from the government. I am not answerable to the government.

"The commission will decide whether the government's instructions on are in conformity with the act or not," he added.

The right of information seeks to bring greater accountability and transparency in governance of the country by providing citizens access to all government records except in cases that affect national security.

The commission, which is presently located in the guesthouse of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy for Training in Jawaharlal University's old campus, is also in search of new premises.

"We are venturing out in search of new premises from the private sector. It should happen in not more a month's time," said Habibullah.

Responding to Kejriwal's contention in the open letter he wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sometime back, he said: "He (Kejriwal) felt the process of setting up the commission was very slow. It could be because he is not from the government."

"The commission is still in the process of being set up. We have skeletal staff. I don't have space to put staff here," he admitted.

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