Fine imposed on PTU official for denying info under RTI Act

Bharat Khanna

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, January 25

The State Information Commissioner (SIC) has imposed a fine of Rs 1.5 lakh on Assistant Registrar-cum-Public Information Officer (PIO) of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar, for delaying or not providing information to an applicant.

Complainant Sadhu Ram Kusla of Bathinda, however, had also sought compensation from the university for harassment and litigation expenses, which was denied by the SIC following lack of provisions under the RTI rules.

The complainant claimed to have sought information to expose an alleged scam of Rs 500 crore pertaining to the collection of examination fee, admission fee, income tax and service tax from different learning centres of Punjab Technical University, running in different states of the country.

Sadhu Ram Kusla, who is a retired government official, had sought for semester-wise information regarding the number of students to whom roll numbers were issued by PTU and total amount of admission fee required to be deposited by these students as per course modules from the academic session September 2005 to March 2014 under the distance education programme for the learning centres of Andaman & Nicobar Island, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Punjab, Haryana and other states.

Based on information obtained, the complainant brought to light a scam of Rs 96 lakh in nine learning centres of PTU that did not submit more than half of the fee taken from students for various courses in distance education.

The PTU authorities, following exposure of the scam, admitted that in nine learning centres, the scam amounted to more than Rs 17 lakh while later the PTU authorities revised the amount to Rs 36 lakh.

However, for the third time, the PTU authorities again came out with the revised estimate and admitted that the scam amounted to Rs 96 lakh.

In Punjab, there are 260 learning centres (LC) while in Haryana, there are 71 such centres. Similarly in UP, there are 140 centres, about 44 in Himachal, about 92 in Rajansthan, about 13 in Jammu and Kashmir, about 150 in Delhi and about 20 centres in Chandigarh.

Under the information obtained, it came to light that there are about 2,800 learning centres that had been providing distance education to students since 2005.

These LCs report to total 39 regional learning facilitate centres (RLFC) in the country.

The complainant also requested for imposition of a penalty to the tune of Rs 250 per day on the PIO of the PTU for denying him the information sought by him when the same information was readily available with the PIO concerned.