WILLIAMNAGAR, June 3: In a major shocker, the Public Information Officer (PIO) of Public Health Engineering (PHE) department in East Garo Hills, Sujeet Marak, has denied providing information on schemes under Jal Jeevan Mission, citing Section 11 of the Right to Information Act (RTI) Act, 2005.
The section in question relates to information, mostly of a confidential nature, where a third party is sent notice on whether they want to disclose information to the RTI applicant. A notice is sent within five days to the third party (supplier) on whether they are willing to disclose the information or not. Further, after the receipt of the notice from the PIO, the third party, within 10 days, is given the opportunity to make representation against the proposed disclosure.
While Section 11 has been embedded in the RTI Act, the denial of information by the PHE department and its argument of contractors becoming third party under JJM does not even stand.
According to the JJM procedures, the concerned department becomes the first party, the contractors become the second while an independent agency, meant to inspect the quality of projects, is the third party.
However the PHE seems to have skewed the entire process and with the intent to not disclose information, forced the mantle of third party onto the contractors.
“When we asked the PIO as to why contractor information as well as amounts released towards them had not been disclosed, he cited Article 11. As per the EGH PHE, the department is the first party, the RTI seeker is the second and the contractor, the third. By his reasoning, it means that we have a stake in the entire JJM operations. This is not only ridiculous but insane,” said Najip G Momin, one of the many RTI activists from Williamnagar.
Najip’s RTI application had sought information on work orders, sanction amounts paid to contractors, names of contractors, among others.
The department, however, cited Section 11 for most of the questions despite the contractor not being the third party at all.
Najip further asked as to what would happen to the third party inspectors that, by their very nomenclature, are supposed to be the third party for the projects. “Does this now mean that the third party has become the fourth party? It’s really amusing how far they will go to deny information,” he said.
As per sources, the reason for the non-disclosure could be the fact that many projects under JJM have not been up to the mark.
Further, another source pointed out that many of the projects undertaken under JJM have actually been taken up by employees of the department, mostly in the names of their close relatives.
The RTI seekers have now decided to escalate the matter to the state’s Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) so that the matter can be sorted out and answers to queries on the RTI application is provided to them.
