CIC Pulls Up Arvind Kejriwal’s Office Over Senior Citizen’s Pension Issue

NEW DELHI:  The Central Information Commission has chided the office of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for “not applying its mind” before transferring petition of a senior citizen, seeking to know status of pension, to 29 departments.

The Commission said it finds it “pathetic” that such an high office like Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) evolves an unhealthy practice of forwarding Right To Information (RTI) applications and directed the CMO to furnish a white paper on the status of all kinds of pensions in Delhi Government, reasons for non-payment, time of payment of arrears and time of resumption of payment of pension etc. within 20 days.

Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu also directed the office to pay a compensation of Rs. one lakh to applicant Charanjeet Singh Bhatia and initiate action against all the Public Information Officers (PIOs) who “unnecessarily” transferred the application to others.

“CMO has not applied its mind to the serious issue raised by the appellant and acted like a post office by simply forwarding his RTI application to other departments, who in turn, went on transferring to other departments,” he said.

Mr Acharyulu said the CMO and other officers are not ready to inform the appellant why they are not paying the pension or when they can start paying the pension.

The Commission said it finds it “pathetic that such an high office like CMO evolves an unhealthy practice of forwarding RTI applications for an unlimited period, thereby causing the denial of information to the appellant regarding the non-payment of pension to his eligible handicapped wife.”

The case relates to RTI application filed by Mr Bhatia to know the information about non-payment of his wife’s pension for 10 months between July 2014 and April 2015. The cheques of three months April-June, 2014 were delivered to him in February 2015, after eight months.