NEW DELHI: At a time when the Congress is hailing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party president Sonia Gandhi for empowering the citizens through the Right to Information Act, its own government in Delhi seems to be denying this privilege to its citizens. It has been charged with withholding documents relating to privatisation of the Delhi Jal Board and the proposed reforms under the World Bank-sponsored programme.

Ever since the controversy over privatisation of water under the World Bank programme erupted and documents about the proposed agreement were made public by leading non-government organisations and eminent citizens, the Delhi Jal Board has put in force a gag order within the organisation with regard to release of information. A recent case is denial of public scrutiny of documents relating to the 24X7 scheme under the Right to Information Act. In response to an application filed by Arvind Kejriwal of NGO Parivartan in July this year under the Delhi Right to Information Act, the Jal Board has only made available for inspection selected papers despite an assurance by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit to put everything relating to the World Bank programme and privatisation open for public scrutiny and on the water utility's website.

According to Mr. Kejriwal, Parivartan had sought inspection of all files relating to correspondence of the Jal Board with World Bank and various consultants under the ongoing Delhi Water Supply and Sewerage Project. It had also sought inspection of all files related to "award of contracts" to various parties including consultants under this project from April 2001 till date.

Interestingly, Mr. Kejriwal said the Jal Board initially refused to provide any information. However, Parivartan filed an appeal with the Public Grievance Commission, which directed the Jal Board on October 6 to provide all information within 12 days. ``When I went to inspect the files on November 2, I was offered inspection of four files containing photocopies of a very small number of pages. When I demanded to inspect the original files, I was told there are no more documents. Any person with average intelligence could make out that these files had been tailor-made for us by taking out documents from the original files,'' says Mr. Kejriwal.

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