Holding that applicant’s act is misuse rather abuse of the Right to Information (RTI) Act with unsavoury motives, Punjab State Information Commission on Friday directed ludhiana Municipal Corporation to ignore an applicant who filed more than 500 RTI applications.
The Commission, during the hearing of a case, directed ludhiana civic body to ignore the RTI applications filed by ludhiana-resident Amarjit Singh Dhamotia, who has filed more than 500 applications under RTI Act and “disrupted the routine work of the MC, ludhiana office”.
Commission’s spokesperson said that Dhamotia has filed 500 application under RTI Act to seek voluminous information, which cannot be provided.
It was held that the RTI applications filed by him have “drastically hampered the routine work” of ludhiana MC.
“Many of the officers of the MC office are all-day busy in dealing with his RTI information, whereas other officers have to visit State Information Commission to file reply in the Commission on the appeal filed by Dhamotia,” said the spokesperson.
Disposing of appeals filed by Dhamotia, the State Information Commissioner Yashvir Mahajan held that “the duty of the Commission to see that such blatant act of misuse of RTI Act should not be allowed further and such situation needs to be appropriately dealt with to secure the faith of the public in the ‘Sun Shine Act’ and remove obstacles in functioning of public authority, which would eventually prevent public authority from focusing on transparency”.
“His act of running riot with filing repeated application seeking inane and voluminous information has become counter-productive of public interest,” stated the Commission adding that the Commission cannot allow such fishing operations of the appellant.
“We see his act as misuse rather abuse of the RTI Act with unsavoury motives. The Commission accordingly disposes all the appeals in hand in terms of section 7 (9) of RTI Act and allows the public authority to ignore his applications in future,” read the orders.