RTI Act 2005 – Furnishing Wrong Information

There are a number of cases where an applicant has filed first appeal with the First Appellate Authority in the Public Authority concerned and second appeal/complaint with the Central Information Commission/State Information , as the case may be, inter-alia, due to the following reasons:

(i) Non-receipt of information within prescribed time;

(ii) Denial of request of information;

(iii) If he/she believes that incomplete/misleading or false information under this Act has been given by the Public Information Officer.

The number of second appeals/complaints registered by the Central Information Commission during three years is as under:

The Right to Information Act, 2005 already provides for imposition of penalty and recommendation of disciplinary action by the Central Information Commission/State Information Commission, as the case may be, against the Public Information Officer who has knowingly given incorrect, incomplete or misleading information under the RTI Act. The CIC/SICs have been imposing such penalties and also recommending disciplinary action against such Public Information Officers.

This was stated by Shri V. Narayanasamy, Minister of State in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension and Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office in written reply to a question by  Shri Bharat Ram Meghwal  today.

PIB News

North Block, New Delhi – 110001

Dated: 11.2.2013

Subject: Timely intimation about payment of additional fee under RTI Act 2005.

It has been brought to the notice of the Central Information Commission that some CPIOs inform the information seeker about the additional fee under sub section 7(3) of the RTI Act at the fag end of the thirty days period prescribed for providing the information under sub-section 7(1) of the RTI Act.

2. The Central Information Commission in one of its orders has mentioned that while there cannot be any hard and fast rule about when exactly the intimation about the photocopying charges should be conveyed to the information seeker, it is implied in the prescribed time limit that the demand for the photocopying charges must be made soon after the RTI application is received so that the information seeker has time to deposit the fees and receive the information within the prescribed thirty days period. If the information sought is not voluminous or is not dispersed over o large number of files, computation of the photocopying charges should not be a time consuming task. As soon as the RTI application is received, the holder of the information should decide about how much information to disclose and then calculate the photocopying charges so that the CPIO can immediately write to the information seeker demanding such fees.

3. This may be brought to the notice of all concerned for compliance.

sd/-

(Sandeep Jain)

Deputy Secretary

Source: www.persmin.nic.in

[http://ccis.nic.in/WriteReadData/CircularPortal/D2/D02rti/12_31_2013-IR-11022013.pdf]