Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Chief
Information Commissioner on Monday directed the state government
to provide details of properties filed by IAS and IPS officers
to the deputy leader of the Congress Legislature Party
Choudhry Rakesh Singh under the RTI Act within 15-days.
Singh had filed an application under the Right to
Information (RTI) Act with the State Government demanding that
copy of the details of properties filed by the IAS and IPS
officers should be provided to him under the Act.
Barring few, rest of the elite service officials
raised objections on various ground that they have provided
the above information under fiduciary relationship (under
confidence and trust).
Secondly, if it was made public then it would lead to
an unnecessary encroachment of their privacy following which
the application was rejected by the respective appelate
authorities.
However, 16 IAS officer out of the total 85 and 26
IPS out of 39 have written to the government that they don`t
have any objection in providing details of their properties
under the RTI Act to the applicant.
A senior IAS officer O P Rawat even enclosed the copy
of details of his properties with the reply.
Citing Supreme Court judgement, CIC Padma Rani Tiwari
ruled that when details of assets owned by people`s
representatives remained in public domain with an intention to
check rising corruption levels, then same logic applies to
public servants also.
She also said, "no question arises of encroachment of
privacy or violation of fiduciary relationship of IAS, IPS
officials".
Admitting the appeal and dismissing earlier orders of
the respective appellate authorities, the CIC directed the
State Government to provide the information under the RTI to
the applicant within 15-days and provide the copy of the
compliance order to the Commission within a month.
PTI
