CHENNAI: In what could make whistle-blowers and RTI activists feel threatened, a woman RTI applicant is allegedly being followed by sleuths from Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department for seeking information on Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s (ONGC) operations in the Cauvery delta. In the last three months, police officials have visited R Vijayalakshmi’s office six times—three by an official from IB and the rest by Special Branch-CID officials of Tamil Nadu police.
All were prompted by RTI applications filed by her seeking information about ONGC’s environmental track record. But, can the Public Information Officers of ONGC and Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) to whom the RTIs were addressed, reveal the identity of the applicant.On January 8, 2014, the Department of Personnel and Training under Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension, Government of India, issued an Office Memorandum that was forwarded to Chief Secretaries of all states/UTs, which says: “The authority should take appropriate measure to hide information with regard to personal details of the activist to avoid any harassment by the persons having vested interest.”
Also, Section 6(2) in the RTI Act, 2005, says that an applicant making a request for information shall not be required to give any reason for requesting the information or any other personal details except those that may be necessary for contacting him.
Vijayalakshmi said the information sought by her was pretty simple and straight forward, which should have been ideally put in public domain voluntarily in the websites of ONGC and regulatory authorities like TNPCB and Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. “The information includes documents like environmental clearances, licences to establish exploratory or production wells and licences to operate them, reports of analyses of air and water quality, Environmental Impact Assessments, data on total number of wells in the delta and the break-up of the number of wells currently in operation, and the number that have been abandoned or closed.
All the information is important and relevant from a public health, public safety and environmental perspective,” she said.The first RTI application was filed before the PIO of ONGC Egmore office on August 7 and the reply was sent on September 11 where ONGC denied the information sought under Section 8(1)(e) of RTI Act.