Dear All
There is the mother of all danger for the RTI Act 2005. Last nail it seems to me is being put in the office of CIC , New Delhi. Pl take a look:
The order of a three judges bench of Supreme Court on the status of employees of URCs( There are appx 4500 registered URCs with another 4500 extention counters across the country. 75% of the URCs being run by serving soldiers , using military transports for collection of goods from the respective Depot) written by Dr Prasayat .J vide SC civil case No 3495 of 2005 delivered on 28 Apr 2009 . Dr Prasayat J retired on 10 May 2009. It said in its order that URCs are private ventures and by no stretch of imagination employees of the URC are either govt employees or employees of CSD.
The JAG Br( Army) inferred that hence the URC are not instrumentality of the state and hence not covered by RTI Act 2005. Army as well CSD, which is a govt of India enterprise denied each and every one any info directly or indirectly related to clandestine operations in running of URCs and converting govt money into private/ non-public fund aided and abetted by the min of Defence and its minister in person.
Unfortunately for the people of this country we have now the rulings from none other than Sri ML Sharma, one of the Info Commissiones in Central Info Commission who is since been entrusted with all the second appeals in respect to RTI queries on URCs since Apr 2009 who is taking umbrage of the inferrence drawn by some JAG Br(Army) official of the order of Dr Prsayat J on SC civil case No 3495 of 2005 delivered on ly on 28 Apr 2009 , 10 days before the Judge retired.. I am attaching one such ruling upholding denial of info by the Army Auth.
I am also attaching PAGE 41 &42 of the PAC chaired by Dr Murli Monahar Joshi of BJP on the very important issue which question the very interpretation of the Army Auth on the question of instrumentality of the state as it was never before the Supreme Court and was specifically stated at para 10 of the same order written by Dr Prasayat.j.
The Info Commissioners as well as the CIc are all held in high regards but such decisions by Sri ML Sharma on the issue deserve a second look as it is demeaning the integrity of the central info commission and trying to shield srmart operators in the Armed forces detrimental to the lager interest of this country.
