What is the best way to demoralise upright officers in government or to get even with someone who persistently refuses to do somebody’s bidding? The traditional method in the districts is to get the person transferred out, if possible to the farthest corner of the State bureaucracy. In the State capital, where transfers out of the government Secretariat are not easy (not that this strategy too has not worked), there are other ways to cause serious discomfiture to officials. A senior official in the Transport Department is learning that lesson in a rather painful way.
The official in question has been mule-like when it came to demands from one of the powerful unions in the department, mostly for transfers and postings and on issues relating to disciplinary action against members of the organisation. As it is, he has been facing serious pressure over a host of issues relating to one of the flagship projects of the Oommen Chandy government and is holding the responsibilities that he currently holds only thanks to support from a powerful member of the Cabinet. However, with disciplinary actions, on which he has little say as the proposals come from way below and are taken only with the approval of the Minister concerned, posing problems for the powerful organisation, he is at the receiving end of attack through a self-styled investigative publication.
Unfazed, the official has taken courage and written to the higher-ups pointing out that more than an attack on him, this is an attack on the fair name of the government and should be acted upon with alacrity.
Right to Information (RTI) activists in the State are a worried lot these days. The reason: lack of movement to fill the existing and arising vacancies in the State Information Commission. What worries them most is the government’s indifference towards a law enacted to empower the citizens and promote transparency and accountability in the working of the government.
The Commission, they feel, would head for a crisis if the government does not act immediately. The Commission now has former Additional Director General of Police Siby Mathews as Chief Commissioner and C.S. Sasikumar as Commissioner. Mr. Sasikumar would complete his term on October 24. That would leave the five-member Commission with just the Chief Information Commissioner and bring its functioning to a virtual halt.
The existing vacancies arose when Kuriakose Kumbalakuzhi and M.N. Gunavardhanan demitted office earlier this year. Another member K. Natarajan has been under suspension since November 9, 2012, following allegations that he had tried to interfere with the Vigilance probe into the case relating to gifting of land to a relative of the Leader of the Opposition V.S.Achuthanandan.
The procedures for appointment of Commission members should be set in motion at least three months before the actual appointment takes effect.
Even if the government were to set the process in motion, it would take at least three months for the new Commissioners to take charge and that would leave the Commission in limbo for that long. Coming as it does in the wake of several challenges to the RTI Act before Courts and the apparent hostility of the officialdom towards RTI activism, the Oommen Chandy government’s reluctance to act on the issue is being seen by RTI activists as a strategy to nullify the effect of the Act which, ironically, was one of the flagship enactments of the first UPA government.
(With inputs from
C. Gouridasan Nair in Thiruvananthapuram and K.C. Gopakumar in Kochi).
