Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Hearing on MPs, MLAs as “public authorities”

Wajahat Habibullah

HYDERABAD: The Chief Information Commissioner of India Wajahat Habibullah will hear on Sundayat New Delhi a case whether Members of Parliament, Assemblies and Legislative Councils could be judged as ‘public authorities’ so that they were liable to scrutiny by public about developmental activities in their constituencies.

Mr. Habibullah told The Hindu here on Sunday that the case came up before him after some petitioners unsuccessfully appealed to a few MPs seeking information on developmental programmes under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

The Lok Sabha Secretariat also expressed helplessness to resolve the problem.

It was then that the matter came up before him with an argument that unless MPs were made public authorities, they could not be held responsible for dispensation of information.

Mr. Habibullah recalled the intervention of the commission a couple of months ago making political parties disclose to public the Income Tax paid by them.

It gave a ruling that the public had a right to know the amount of Income Tax paid by the parties as they were not private citizens.

Another order of the commission declaring the Stock Exchanges, Power Distribution Companies and the Indian Olympic Association as public authorities was challenged in court.

While declaring them public authorities, the commission felt that they should include organisations owned, controlled or substantially financed by the government.

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), however, lost in the Delhi High Court a petition challenging the order of the Central Information Commission that the UPSC disclose cut-off marks of candidates taking its examinations after the declaration of results.

The Chief Commissioner regretted that not enough work had gone into computerisation of records for the success of RTI Act.

The basic structure of the act rested on computerisation, he said.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu