Is there any rule that visitors to government offices shall not wear footwear, but leave them outside the premises while meeting the bureaucrats. If so, is there any G.O to this effect…. These were a few questions raised by an RTI activist in Madurai.
The activist was told that a VAO in Madurai district insisted people visiting him remove footwear before entering his room. Irked, the activist sought a response through the Right to Information Act and wrote to the VAO and other officers up the ladder in the district and at the State level.
Swiftly, he got a response from the VAO concerned that there was no such rule or any Government Order. The jurisdiction Tahsildar also wrote back stating that there is no G.O.
However, the Personal Assistant (General) to the Madurai District Collector replied in a typical government format. “The Act clearly spelt out the steps on how information shall be obtained in 2 (f) of the RTI Act of 2005. Since, your query does not fit into it, the information you had asked for shall not be disseminated by this office…”
A State officer, attached with the Public Information Department in Chennai, had a similar response.
While appreciating the VAO and Tahsildar, the RTI activist, K. Hakeem, said that it is usually the lower-level officers who refuse information under RTI. In this case, the response from high offices shows scant respect to the RTI and info seeking public.
AIADMK supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa is referred to as the Iron Lady by her partymen. While she has absolute control over the party, the infighting, at times, comes out in the open. In a recent skirmish, the Karambakudi panchayat union chairperson C. Gengaiammal and her husband M. Chockalingam, former union secretary, alleged that the Health Minister C. Vijaya Baskar had made “derogatory” remarks against their community. And a rally was taken out in protest by the community leaders. The Minister, however, refuted the charges. A few days later, Gengaiammal and her husband were removed from the primary membership of the party.
In Chennai, the rains have brought the ruling party politicians, including the Ministers and MLAs to the roads. In R.K. Nagar constituency where Ms. Jayalalithaa won by a margin of 1.52 lakh votes, Chennai Mayor and district secretary P. Vetrivel got into a tussle. While the Mayor had gone to the constituency to oversee relief work, the former MLA of the RK Nagar constituency, who quit the MLA post so that Ms. Jayalalithaa could contest and return as Chief Minister, did not like it, party sources say. Whether he likes the Mayor or not, one thing is clear. The party supremo has zero tolerance for infighting, that too in public.
BJP senior leader H. Raja is on cloud nine these days. While he did not get to become the Tamil Nadu BJP chief as the party president Amit Shah preferred Tamilisai Soundararajan, Mr. Raja had to be content playing the role of a propagandist in the Dravidian homeland. He tries his best but his strong views more often led to heated debates in public. He got his break with the party making him the Kerala in-charge. After the party performed better in the neighbouring State in the recently concluded local body elections, his supporters think that he could become the party president in Tamil Nadu unit. The grapevine at Kamalalayam, the party headquarters here, is though that the national leadership may not effect a change in the leadership with the Assembly elections close.
At a press conference in Coimbatore, PMK leader Dr. S. Ramadoss said he liked addressing the media in the city compared to journalists in three other cities. “Because you ask me good questions,” he said a couple of times with a smile and with an emphasis on ‘good questions’. It was an indication to the journalists present there not to ask “uncomfortable questions”.
The reporters, though, fired away.
(Reporting by L. Srikrishna, Deepa H. Ramakrishnan, Sruthisagar Yamunan and M.K. Ananth)
