Patiala SSP office delivers info

PATIALA: Taking a u-turn on its earlier stand, the office of Patiala Senior Superintendent of police (SSP) has provided all the information about the police administrative set-up in the district after directions from the State Information Commission (SIC), while earlier the office had claimed that it did not have the information that was sought by applicant Kuldeep Singh.

The court of SIC Darbara Singh Kahlon on January 28, directed all public information officers of Punjab to computerize their records, which is mandatory under section 4 (1) (B) of RTI Act 2005, so that applicants could get information they wanted without any harassment.

Kuldeep Singh through his application submitted to the Patiala SSP office in October 2010 had sought details of names and complete postal addresses of all offices in Patiala, besides names, ranks, mobile numbers and email addresses of officers posted in these offices.

Even though according to section 4 (1) (B) of RTI Act, all government departments are bound to provide basic information about the administrative set-up of their respective departments, the Patiala police had rejected Kuldeep's RTI application by saying that they didn't have any such information. The assistant public information officer ( APIO) had stated in his reply that they are not bound to "create information."

"Following the directions of the SIC, I have received all information about police stations, posts and officers posted there. It's strange that the same office of SSP Patiala has delivered all the information now, while earlier it had claimed that it did not have any such information," said Kuldeep, while showing the copies of the order and the information.

Without naming any PIO, the commissioner in it's order has rapped PIOs posted in various government departments for their failure in implementing the RTI Act in their respective departments more than five years after the implementation of the Act.

"This court directs all PIOs of Punjab to computerize all their records so that the sought information could be delivered to applicants without any harassment," says the SIC order.