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Friends,
I had sent two registered letters dated respectively 30/01/2009 and
09/02/2009 to the Public Information Officer of the Chief Secretary
office of Jharkhand seeking some information in each of these
petitions. The address I had marked was- "Press Information Officer,
Chief Secretary Office, Jharkhand government, Ranchi". I got a shock
when both these letters got returned to me respectively on 06/02/2009
and 13/02/2009. But when I saw the noting on both these letters, I got
really amused and heavily alarmed. The first of these letters was
returned with a noting from the Postal department- "The address is
incomplete and hence could not be delivered". The second letter
instead had a noting- "There is no such post in the Chief Secretary
Office and hence refused to take the letter".
There are two separate questions related with these happenings-
1. How could one of the two letters reach the desired location and the
other could not when both of them had the same address written upon it?
2. How is it possible that the Chief Secretary Office at Jharkhand
does not have a Public Information Officer posted there when the Right
to Information Act clearly specifies and expects under section 5 (1)
that Every public authority shall, within one hundred days of the
enactment of this Act, designate as many officers as the Central
Public Information Officers or State Public Information Officers, as
the case may be, in all administrative units or offices under it as
may be necessary to provide information to persons requesting for the
information under this Act.
I have requested the Chief Secretary, Jharkhand government and the
Chief Post-Master general, Jharkhand circle to look into these
discrepancies but I thought I might as well share these facts with you.
Dr Nutan Thakur
Secretary
IRDS,.
Lucknow (UP)
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