A state information commissioner in Andhra Pradesh is pushing for officials to comply with the Right to Information Act and imposing fines.
Commissioner P Vijaya Babu at a press conference July 28 said he has asked the chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh to require that officials respond to the applications, according to a report in the New Indian Express.
Fines have been imposed on four officials of the Labour Department for not furnishing information and/or not attending a hearing, he said.
The maximum fine of 25,000 rupees ($411) was imposed on one top official, two were penallzed Rs. 10,000 ($164) and a fourth Rs. 5,000 ($82).
He said that he had issued show-cause notices to officials in more than a dozen places for negligence in the disposal of RTI petitions.
“As they are not responding to the notices, the CS [chief secretary] had to intervene and see that the law is implemented properly,” he added.
Another news report, in The Hindu, says the commissioner ordered five officials to pay compensation for causing “mental agony” and loss of livelihood to RTI petitioners by not providing information on time.
“Many of the petitioners are senior citizens and there are other petitioners who had to forgo a day’s wage to attend hearings. Officers who do not attending such hearings are bound to pay compensation to the petitioner,” the commissioner said.
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