Sakshi Trust "RTI"

Vinod Malhotra, a concerned Bangalore resident, had been pursuing the case of illegal commercial and political advertisement hoardings in Bangalore with Bangalore Mahanagar Palika (BMP) since he moved to Bangalore in May 2005. He was really ticked off by city corporators, MLAs, MPs and their supporters littering the city with their posters, as if the whole city were their backyard.

Then came the RTI Act in October. He filed an application with the PIO, Advertisement, in the BMP central office on October 25. Within a few days, he received a reply from the PIO stating that the required information was with the three zonal officers and he should approach them. The PIO also returned his postal order. The PIO happened to be the DC he had been calling earlier. He called the DC again to remind him that that there was no provision under the RTI Act to return the request for information. He also reminded him that some of the questions related to the policies decided by the central office. Therefore, he could not be asked to collect information from the zonal offices.

He mailed an appeal to the first appellate authority on November 15 against the rejection of his application. When he did not get a response for more than 30 days, he filed the second appeal with CIC on December 28. In response, the CIC asked the appellate authority on January 7 to furnish a response within a week. That set the alarm bells ringing at the BMP office. The appellate authority called for a hearing against the PIO on January 12 and invited Vinod Malhotra. Malhotra declined to attend the hearing based on the argument that the appellate authority itself had violated the RTI Act by not acting on his application within 30 days and now the matter was under consideration by CIC. The appellate authority, however, did hold a hearing on January 12 in his absence and asked the PIO to furnish all the available information the same day. It was the first victory - instead of making him run around to various zonal offices, one PIO was being held accountable to provide all the information.

He received a call from the PIO on January 18 that the information was ready and he could pick it up from another person in the BMP office. He requested that the information be sent to him via postal mail as he did not have time to personally visit BMP office. The PIO would not budge from his position. Finally when he called the concerned person who had the information, he agreed to deliver it to Malhotra's office. He received voluminous information, about 200 pages, on January 20, but it was mostly obsolete, incomplete and to some extent false. He therefore e-mailed a formal complaint to CIC on January 23 under Section 18 and asked for a hearing. He had to call the CIC office a couple of times to get things moving. In the end, CIC was very accommodating and the hearing date was set for Sat, February 18, a holiday for Vinod but a working day for BMP.