VU reader seeks information

The Statesman, 23 September 2010
shyam sundar roy
MIDNAPORE, 23 SEPT: The work of the West Bengal Information Commission has virtually come to a halt owing to a battle between the chief minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and the Opposition leader, Mr Partha Chatterjee, over the appointment of the Chief Information Commissioner after Mr Arun Kumar Bhattacharya retired from the post last month.
As a result of this tug of war, the Governor, Mr MK Narayan, has also reportedly put some queries to the state government over the protocol to be followed regarding the appointment of Mr Sujit Sarkar as the new incumbent.
Meanwhile, numerous cases are pending for months with the commission's office despite an order passed by Mr Justice Jayanta Biswas of Calcutta High Court on 7 July.
In the said order, Mr Justice Jayanta Biswas stated, "the Second Appellate Authority (West Bengal Information Commission) shall decide the petitioner's Second Appeal within 45 days from the date of communication of this order."
This order was passed in connection with the writ petition No 11933 (W) of 2010, filed by Mr Akhil Kumar Roy against the West Bengal Information Commission.
A similar story unfolded at Vidyasagar University (VU). Several complaints were lodged by Dr Abhijit Guha, a reader in the department of anthropology, VU, against the Public Information Officer (PIO) of the university, Mr Subir Kumar Basu, for not supplying the required information under the RTI Act.
In one of his RTI applications on 4 March 2010, Dr Guha sought to know the financial and other details of the foreign tours of the university's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Swapan Kumar Pramanick, between 2004 and 2009.
But the PIO rejected Dr Guha's RTI request on the plea that the information sought by him are personal in nature.
After that, Dr Guha filed his First Appeal on 6 April 2010 to the VU registrar and Appellate Authority, Dr Ranajit Dhar, pointing out that for his foreign tours the Vice-Chancellor had used the office of the Vice-Chancellor and to support his conference-related expenditures he had taken funds from the UGC and the VU.
Then, Dr Guha argued that the documents he had sought in his RTI application are in no way "personal in nature" as claimed by the PIO.
But the Appellate Authority of the VU also seemed to have not acted properly on the First Appeal made by Dr Guha who then being disgusted filed his Second Appeal to the secretary of the commission on 10 May, 2010 seeking justice as per the RTI Act.
Dr Guha also requested the PIO to supply him the vouchers which were supposed to have been submitted to the Finance Officer of the VU by the V-C against his expenditures of over Rs 60,000 taken from the UGC's unassigned grants in connection with his trip to attend the 36th World Congress of Sociology held between 7 and 11 July 2004 in Beijing, China.
But the commission is still sitting over the litany of complaints of Dr Guha which they received on 10 May, 2010 ignoring the High Court order.