Three replies to an RTI application seeking details of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras and solar energy panels in the newly constructed building at the Coimbatore Collectorate has the applicant confused.
Coimbatore Consumer Cause activist K. Kathirmathiyon wrote to the Personal Assistant (General) (PA-G) at the Coimbatore Collectorate asking if the district administration had installed CCTV cameras at the building and if so, the number of cameras installed. He also sought details about provision made for tapping solar panels.
Invoking the Right to Information Act, he sent the letter on August 11. In its first response dated August 21, the office of the PAG said it transferred the RTI application to the Development Section for appropriate response.
The very same day it also sent him another reply saying the questions were “interrogative” in nature and that it could not be answered. Incidentally, the PA-G’s office had numbered the letter consecutively.
Three days later, on August 24, the PA-G’s office sent another letter saying it had again transferred the query to the Development Section. All the three letters carry different numbers.
Confused at the reply, Mr. Kathirmathiyon said he did not know which one to rely upon. “Which one should I believe as the PAG had signed all the three letters.”
He had preferred an appeal to the District Revenue Officer citing provisions of the Right to Information Act. In his appeal he had said the Public Information Officer - in this case the PAG - should have transferred to the appropriate Public Information Officer if he/she did not have replies.
On the issue of the questions being “interrogative”, he wrote to the appellate officer asking how did the officer construe that asking about CCTV cameras and solar panels were interrogative in nature. “The PIO [PA-G] had invented the reason and it was a deliberate denial of available information that could attract Sec. 20 of the Right to Information Act.”
As per The Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Installation of Closed Circuit Television Units in Public Buildings Rule, 2012, public buildings ought have CCTV cameras installed, Mr. Kathirmathiyon said.
Likewise, it was the Tamil Nadu Government’s solar energy policy that public buildings should have solar panels, he added.
