New Delhi: The Central Information
Commission has imposed a penalty of Rs 15,000 on senior
officials of IIT-Kharagpur for delay in providing information
to a professor of the Institute.
The transparency panel has also directed the engineering
institute to pay a compensation of Rs 5,000 to Professor Rajeev Kumar for the loss and detriment suffered by him.
"For two simple and straightforward queries, the
complainant had to wait for almost five months.This may be due
to the carelessness of the officials or the poor functioning
of the Institution," Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi
said in the order.
Gandhi observed that there was no reasonable cause for
what appears to be a joint responsibility of Dr T K Ghosal,
Registrar, and his OSD T K Mukherjee in delaying the supply of
information to Professor Kumar.
Kumar, On October 4 last year, had sought from the
Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law (RGSIPL) at
the IIT the list of all the individuals who were called for
guest and invited lectures at the School from July 2006
onwards.
He also sought to know the names, designation and all
the related details including nature of work, total amount of
remuneration and honorarium paid to them.
The application kept moving between different departments
without any satisfactory reply provided to Kumar.
The Commission noted there was no reasonable cause that
has been advanced by the Registrar and OSD for not providing
information to the complainant after it was received on
November 25, 2009 from Prof V C Vivekanandan, Dean Professor
of Law at RGSIPL to whom the application was forwarded.
"From these facts it appears that T K Ghosal and T K
Mukherjee were clearly responsible for not providing the
complete information to the complainant (Kumar) from the
period November 25 - when part of the information was received
from Prof. Vivekanandanan- to February 1, 2010 when the
details of remuneration were obtained and provided," Gandhi
said.
Gandhi, in his order, said it is "a fit case for levying
penalty" on the two officers.
"The amount may be deducted at the rate of Rs 5,000 every
month from their salary for three months," he said.
PTI
