Central Information Commission
Mrnaresh Kumar vs Northern Railway on 30 June, 2016
CENTRAL INFORMATION COMMISSION
Club building, Opposite Ber Sarai Market, Old JNU Campus, New Delhi- 110067.
Tel: 011 - 26182593/26182594
Email: [email protected]
File No : CIC/VS/A/2014/002915-AB
In the matter of:
Mr. Naresh Kumar
Railway Colony Dhakatalab
Near Malgodam Road
Railway Bungalow no. IT-13A/SPN
Dist Shahjahanpur (U.P) ...Appellant
242001
Vs.
Central Public information Officer
M/o Railways
Wari Mandal samagri Prabandhak
Uttar Railway Moradabad (U.P) ..Respondent
Dates
RTI application : 03.03.2014
CPIO reply : 24.06.2014
First Appeal : 01.05.2014
FAA Order : Not on record
Second Appeal dated : 16.09.2014
Date of hearing : 30.06.2016
Information sought:
The appellant is aggrieved with non payment of his allowances and wanted to know the details for the same.
Grounds for Second Appeal The CPIO did not provide the desired information.
Order On the appointed date and time, the appellant was present. Heard the respondent PIO Shri Ashish Jain, Sr. Divisional Material Manager. The PIO was contacted over phone as the VC was not functioning properly.1
It was submitted by the appellant that although he obtained some reply in regard to his RTI application dated 03.03.2014, the information received was neither complete nor specific. The information sought was regarding non payment of travelling allowance as well as National Holiday (NH) allowance for the months of February 2012, March 2012, July 2012, January 2013, November 2013 to December 2013, January 2014, August 2014 & September 2014 to December 2014. The RTI application sought to know the reason for non payment and also the officer/staff responsible for the non payment.
The CPIO over telephone stated that information regarding who was responsible for non payment is outside the purview of the RTI Act.
On perusal of the record, it is seen that respondent had sought to evade reply to the query by taking recourse to the principle of RTI Act stating that RTI Act does not require reply to queries like "how", "why" etc. Any information seeker has the right to seek information u/s 2(f) of the RTI Act.
In this particular case the appellant sought information regarding the reason for non- payment of allowances for so many months. Hence the public authority is required to provide any document/recording in the form of notings, correspondence, marginal noting etc. in regard to the bill(s) submitted by the applicant for the payment of such allowances. The details of the bills submitted for payment of OT & NH allowances had also been mentioned in the said RTI application.
The CPIO also agreed that such information is covered u/s 2(f) of the RTI and should be provided to the appellant. Be that as it may, the CPIO is hereby directed to provide copies of all documents including notings, marginal noting, note sheet copies, correspondence etc. in respect of the payment of travelling allowance and national holiday allowance of the applicant for the period mentioned in the RTI application, to the appellant. The said information is to be provided within one month of the receipt of this order. With this direction, the case is disposed of.
[Amitava Bhattacharyya] Information Commissioner Authenticated true copy (A.K.Talapatra) Dy. Registrar 2 3