THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy is all set to file an appeal against the rejection of his plea to the state Chief Secretary under the Right to Information (RTI) Act for facilitating a copy of the Solar Commission report, despite the Assembly being specially convened on November 9 for the sole purpose of tabling the report.
Chandy is keen to make it a point that the denial of a copy of the report to him even after the Chief Minister divulged the gist of the conclusions in the report and announced a probe by convening a news conference, infringed the rights of a citizen as envisaged in the RTI Act and under the Constitution.
Chandy was given a formal reply by the Public Information Officer in the Chief Secretary’s secretariat, stating that ‘disclosure of the information sought is under the purview of section 8 (1) (i) of the RTI Act, 2005’ and ‘the matter is not complete or over so that the material could be disclosed as envisaged under the aforesaid purview’ and ‘it could not be disclosed at present’.
At the outset of the reply, Chandy was informed that the matter requested ‘are part of cabinet papers’ and upon which,’ a decision was taken at the meeting of the Council of Ministers on October 11, 2017’.
The interesting part of the reply is the affirmation that the RTI application of Chandy dated October 12 was received on the next day,and the text of the reply was dated on October 14.
However,the reply was received in the capital city office address of Chandy only after ten days, on October 24.Chandy was also directed in the reply that he can approach the appellate authority concerned, if unsatisfied with the reply received, under section19 of the RTI Act within thirty days of the receipt of the reply.