AHMEDABAD: Perhaps in a first, the Gujarat state chief information commissioner (SCIC) has banned three people — all members of a family — from filing any RTI application before any designated public information officer (PIO) for the next five years.
SCIC DP Thakar has taken refuge in Article 19(2) of the Indian Constitution to ban the family from seeking any further information under RTI. Article 19(2) authorises the government to impose, by law, reasonable restrictions upon the freedom of speech and expression “in the interests of… public order”. Thakar accused the family members of “misusing” the “sunshine law” for harassing government officers in the time of the pandemic.
According to Thakar’s order dated January 5, Dilhari Makwana, a Class-III employee of Bhavnagar district health department, her husband Chintan and mother-in-law Bharti had shot off more than 1,000 emails and 21 RTI applications to various offices to protect themselves from eviction from their allotted Class-II government quarters. The quarter occupied by them was now allotted to a Class-II officer.
Strangely, the SCIC order does not mention under what Section of the RTI Act were the citizens banned from filing applications. This has invited ire of RTI activists.
“There is no such Section under the present Act that bans citizens (from filing applications). The SCIC has clearly gone beyond the law in this order,” said Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pehel , an NGO, executive secretary Pankti Jog.