Haryana has become the first state among the country, which made and implemented the mechanism to recover the penalty from the state public information officers’ (SPIO’s) salary for not providing information under Right to Information Act.
The action has been initiated on the basis of the orders passed by Lokayukta Haryana Justice Haripal Verma after a long hearing for six years in a petition filed by an RTI activist PP Kapoor.
PP Kapoor, a Samalkha-based RTI activist said that the Lokayukta Haryana has passed several orders into the matter in the last six years and several meetings were held at the level of Chief Secretary, Haryana. The Lokayukta has also sought an action taken report within three months, Kapoor added.
Kapoor filed a complaint in the court of the Lokayukta, Haryana, on July 21, 2020, in which he alleged that maximum of the SPIOs didn’t provide the information nor deposited the penalty imposed upon them by the State Information Commission. The complainant in his petition demanded to recover Rs 2.72 crore penalty from such 1,726 defaulter SPIOs in the state.
Kapoor said that the state government in his report to the Lokayukta said that a total Rs 2.94 crore penalty is pending with the officials of 16 departments, including Rs 1.34 crore penalty is pending with the SPIOs of Panchayat and Development Department; Rs 80.96 lakh with the officials of Urban Local Bodies (ULB) department; Rs 22.72 lakh with Education Department officials; 14.76 lakh from Revenue Department etc.
Kapoor claimed that Haryana has become the first state across the country to make a mechanism to recover the pending penalty amount from the defaulter SPIOs. With this mechanism the government will get revenue by recovering the penalty amount as well as it will crack down on defaulter SPIOs, Kapoor added.
Kapoor further said that as per the mechanism made by the state government, the details of the defaulter SPIOs to be uploaded on the website and the state information commission to provide the details of defaulter SPIOs to the head of the concerned departments at every quarter. The outstanding penalty amount will be deducted from the salary or pension of the defaulting SPIOs from time to time, Kapoor added.
The government has directed all administrative secretaries and the departmental heads to recover the outstanding penalty amount and these officials will provide the report of recovery of penalty to the State Information Commission every month, Kapoor maintained.
