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February 05, 2010

President's secretariat needs to follow transparency


THE PRESIDENT'S Secretariat has been continuously resisting an RTI petition seeking a copy of the letter written by the then Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy to the President about propriety of the then Election Commissioner Navin Chawla (now Chief Election Commissioner) for being Election Commissioner. But interestingly media-reports (TOI 04.02.2010) indicate that copy of the same letter was provided by Union Law Ministry under RTI Act much earlier in May 2009 to Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley. Is RTI Act also different for different categories of petitioners or for different public-authorities?

Suppressing of information is rather injurious for those interested in hiding the information, as it creates more doubts and suspicion in minds of general public. If everything is clear and genuine, then public-authorities should be bold enough to be transparent in their own interest. President secretariat should now provide the copy of the referred letter as sought in CIC petition-number CIC/WB/A/2009/00770 without any further delay and resistance.

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