Fine for information denial to be recovered from officials' pay in Haryana

Mukesh Tandon

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Panipat, March 13

Penalty amount from the state public information officers’ (SPIO) salary will be deducted automatically as the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has developed a module to recover the penalty amount.

As many as 1,726 government officials designated as state public information officers (SPIOs), under the Right to Information Act, were yet to pay Rs 2.27 crore, out of the Rs 3.5 crore fine imposed on them by the SIC from 2006 to 2019.

PP Kapoor, an RTI activist in his complaint filed to the Lokayukta, Haryana, on July 21, 2020, stated that the State Information Commission (SIC) had become “toothless” as the SPIOs designated by the government neither provided information within the stipulated period of 30 days nor do they pay the fine imposed on them by the commission for the delays.

Kapoor informed the Lokayukta that the SIC had imposed a fine of Rs 3,50,54,740 ever since its inception in 2006 till 2019, but out of this, Rs 2.27 crore was still to be recovered as officials were ignoring to pay the fine and the commission did not have a mechanism to force them to comply with the orders.

He also supplied a list of 1,726 government officials, many of them HCS officers, who had not paid their fine. Following the complaint, Lokayukta, Haryana, had given the notice to the state government.

Following the notice, the state government had constituted a high power monitoring committee under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary to monitor the payment of the fine on January 18, 2021.

Now, Rakesh Sandhu, Deputy Secretary from the Administrative Reforms Department, informed the Lokayukta, Haryana, during the hearing of the case on February 21 that NIC has developed a module for linking the amount of penalty in Human Resource Management System (HRMS). It would further be linked to the e-salary of SPIOs and the NIC has also handed over the password and user ID to the commission, Kapoor said.

The NIC has been requested to make such linkage functional. As soon as the module is made functional by the Director, NIC, Director General, (Treasury and Accounts), Haryana, will be requested to issue instructions to all the Drawing and Disbursing Officers (DDOs) of public authorities to deduct the amount of penalty from the defaulting SPIOs.

Sandhu also told the Lokayukta, Haryana, that Director, NIC, has already informed the Director General, (Accounts and Treasury), that the module software is ready. The Treasury and Accounts Department may be requested to issue standing instructions to link outstanding penalties of HRMS and e-salary to all the DDOs of public authority at an early date so that the recovery process from the defaulting SPIOs may be started. The next hearing in the matter is on April 20, Kapoor said.

Rs2.27 crore pending

As many as 1,726 government officials designated as state public information officers (SPIOs), under the Right to Information Act, are yet to pay Rs 2.27 crore, out of the Rs 3.5 crore fine imposed on them by the SIC from 2006 to 2019.