Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, March 30
With the Haryana Information Commission yet to recover Rs 2.27 crore fine imposed on officials, the state government has informed the Lokayukta that it has set up a panel under the Chief Secretary to monitor the recovery of the pending dues.
The Lokayukta is hearing a complaint by RTI activist PP Kapoor that 1,726 government officials, many of them HCSofficers, designated as state public information officers (SPIOs), under the Right to Information Act, were ignoring to pay Rs 2.27 crore, out of the Rs 3.5 crore fine imposed on them by the State Information Commission from 2006 to 2019.
The RTI activist alleged in his complaint filed on July 21, 2020, that the State Information Commission had become "toothless" as the SPIOs designated by the government neither provided information within the stipulated period of 30 days nor do they pay the fine imposed on them by the Commission for the delays.
Kapoor informed the Lokayukta that the State Information Commission had imposed a fine of Rs 3,50,54,740 ever since its inception in 2006 till 2019, but out of this, Rs 2.27 crore was still to be recovered as officials were ignoring to pay the fine and the Commission did not have a mechanism to force them to comply with the orders.
He also supplied a list of 1,726 government officials, many of them HCS officers, who had not paid their fine.
One of the officers has to pay Rs 1.82 lakh to the Commission as fine, while several of them owe more than Rs 1 lakh.
The Lokayukta, Haryana, has informed Kapoor that the state government, in its reply, had said that a panel, under the Chief Secretary, had now been constituted to monitor the payment of the fines.
The panel will have Additional Chief Secretary of Administrative Reform Department as member (secretary) and Additional Chief Secretary of the department concerned and the Registrar of the Commission as members.
The next date of hearing before Lokayukta Justice NK Agarwal is on May 13.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/3ftnqMI
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