Yet another Public Information Officer (PIO) of the Police Department was penalised for not providing information sought under the Right to Information Act. Interestingly all the information has been sought by none other than a senior officer of the same department belonging to elite cadre of Indian Police Services.
According to a communiqué issued by social and RTI activist, Nutan Thakur, on Friday afternoon, she claimed that Dharmendra Sachan, PIO of the Director General of Police office has been fined Rs. 25,000 by Ranjit Singh Pankaj, Chief Information Commissioner, UP in a matter concerning her husband Amitabh Thakur. Thakur has sought certain information related with his posting to Rules and Manuals office being against Rules.
She claimed that Pankaj had repeatedly directed the PIO to provide the information but it was not complied. On Friday, when the PIO even did not turned up before the Commission to reply to a notice, CIC took the matter seriously and imposed a penalty of Rs. 25,000 on the PIO under section 20(1) of the RTI Act. Nutan Thakur claimed that this is the third case after IG (Karmik) Tanuja Srivastava and Home Department PIO Kamal Kishore Srivastava in last six weeks when a PIO has been penalized for not providing information to Thakur.
It may be mentioned that few days back, even the principal secretary home. RM Srivastava invited controversy when in RTI sought by Nutan Thakur, he directed the DGP to stop entertaining applications of the said social activists. However, the matter was somehow settled when chief secretary, Jawed Usmani ruled out the direction of RM Srivastava.