The Haryana State Information Commission has pulled up the Municipal Corporation, Faridabad, for failing to answer a Right to Information query for more than five years and eight months. The Commission has ordered the civic body to pay Rs 10,000 as compensation to the applicant and has also ordered a departmental inquiry to find out which officials were responsible for the delay.
The order was passed by State Information Commissioner Dr Ajay Kumar Sura on September 11, while disposing of a second appeal filed by Gauri Maulekhi. She had filed the RTI application in December 2020.
What the RTI Query Asked For
The RTI application was not about a small matter. Maulekhi had sought information on the Municipal Corporation's compliance with the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2001. Her questions covered several specific points:
- Orders passed by the committee concerned
- The master plan for sterilisation of stray animals
- Details of the empanelled agency handling the work
- Steps taken to promote the adoption of Indian dogs
These are basic accountability questions. Any citizen has the right to ask them, and any public body is expected to answer them within the time limit set under the RTI Act. In this case, that did not happen for years.
Why the Commission Acted
The Commission's order makes two things clear. First, the Municipal Corporation failed in its duty to respond to a valid RTI application. Second, the delay was serious enough to invite both a financial penalty and an internal probe.
The Rs 10,000 compensation is meant to acknowledge the harm done to the applicant, who was kept waiting for information she was legally entitled to receive. The departmental inquiry is meant to go a step further — to identify the officials who let the file sit and to fix responsibility on them.
This is not the first time an information commission has had to step in when a public authority ignored an RTI request. But the length of the delay here — over five years and eight months — stands out. It shows how easily a routine query can get buried inside a municipal body if no one is held accountable.
Our Take: Accountability Cannot Be Optional
To put it plainly, the RTI Act exists so that citizens can hold public bodies to account. When a corporation takes more than five years to answer a simple set of questions, the law stops working the way it should.
In our view, the compensation of Rs 10,000 is a fair penalty, but the departmental inquiry matters more. A fine paid from public funds does not hurt any individual official. A probe that names those responsible does. That is the part of this order that could actually change behaviour inside the Municipal Corporation, Faridabad.
The other point worth noting is what the RTI was about. Questions on sterilisation plans, empanelled agencies, and the adoption of Indian dogs are directly linked to how the city manages its stray animal population. When that information is withheld for years, citizens are kept in the dark about work that affects their neighbourhoods every day.
For readers, the lesson is simple. If a public authority ignores your RTI application, you can escalate it. This case shows that information commissions can and do act — with compensation and with inquiries. The system is slow, but it is not powerless.