RTI – CBEC tones down rank of CPIO
Apparently, the CBEC like other Government Departments is not very happy with the Right To Information Act and its clumsy procedures, whereby senior Departmental officers are made to waste their time appearing before ordinary members of the Central Information Commission. So now, they have found out an easy way. Now the CPIO is an Assistant Commissioner/Deputy Commissioner and the appellate authority is the JC/AdC. So an appeal against the JC's refusal to part with the information will lie to the CIC. The Chief Information Commissioner is of the rank of Cabinet Secretary/ CEC/Supreme Court Judge and now the CBEC wants the JC's order to be heard by such an eminently high Authority – just to protect the Commissioners and Chief Commissioners from the ire of the CIC.
The ideal situation would have been to make the Sepoy as CPIO and a tax assistant as the appellate authority – that way exalted senior officers like AC and JC too could have been also spared of the inconvenience of answering stupid questions from the citizens who are your real masters!
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