Reacting to the media reports stating that around 35% of the penalty imposed on officials under the provisions of the Right to Information Act, 2006, was not collected, Chief Information Commissioner (Haryana) Yash Pal Singal said several steps have been taken by the commission for the past two years, including amendments in the rules, to ensure strict compliance in this regard.
Speaking to The Hindu , former Director-General of Police (Haryana) Mr. Singal said: “Earlier the law was silent who was responsible for the collection of penalty. No one worked on it for 12 years. But after I took over, first we got the rules amended in 2018 to make the Registrar responsible for it. We wrote letters, seeking penalty but the defaulter officials were reluctant to pay. It did not work,” said Mr. Singal.
He said it was then decided to fix the responsibility of the Drawing and Disbursing Officer to deduct the penalty amount from the salary of the defaulters and to take action against him in case he failed to do so.
“Besides this, we also decided that the defaulter official should not be issued the last pay certificate before he cleared his dues. In case of those nearing retirement, we decided that their ‘no dues certificates’ be withheld to pressurise them to pay the penalty. Also, it was decided to deduct the penalty amount from the pension of the defaulters. A letter was issued to all departments concerned in this regard in August last year,” Mr. Singal added.
He claimed the matter was again discussed in a meeting on January 16. “All our efforts have bore encouraging results. Also, the commission has imposed penalty in far more cases over the past five years than in the earlier period. We are committed to the effective implementation of the RTI Act and the to use the power at our disposal for this purpose,” said the official.
In reply to an application by RTI activist P.P. Kapoor, Haryana State Information Commission, Under-secretary Yagya Dutt Chugh has revealed that 1,726 defaulter officials, including many belonging to the Haryana Civil Services cadre, had not paid penalty to the tune of ₹2.27 crore till December 31, 2019. The commission had imposed fine on 2,974 officials against the appeals made to it for not sharing information. Of the total fine of ₹3.50 crore imposed, only ₹1.23 have been recovered so far.
Mr. Kapoor demanded setting up of an enforcement wing to ensure collect of penalty charges from the defaulters to ensure strict implementation of the RTI Act.
