By IANS,
New Delh: The Central Information Commission (CIC) has criticised the Delhi government for “throwing away” public money as an investigation revealed that old age and widow pension were being paid to people without proper verification.
The criticism came on an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) by Ali Mohammad Saifi, a resident of Kalyanpuri in east Delhi.
He had sought information from the Delhi government’s social welfare department on 32 people who were getting pension.
But when he didn’t get any satisfactory information from the department, Saifi approached the CIC which conducted a hearing April 8. Kiran Gandhi, who is the Public Information Officer (PIO) and district officer (east), attended the hearing.
“The appellant had provided 32 names where he stated that old age pensions and widow pensions were being given wrongly. Consequent to this, the department has carried out an investigation and discovered that some of the persons to whom pension was being paid were dead, some had shifted and some were financially sound,” Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi noted in his order.
“The PIO admits that as per the rules a re-investigation has to be done every quarter but in practice this is not being done. It appears that if 25 out of 32 were found to be not eligible, the total percentage of people to whom these pensions are being given may be very large,” Shailesh Gandhi said.
“It is distressing that such a large amount of money is being paid without verification being done at some reasonable interval. It is apparent that public money is being thrown away without verification,” he added.
He said: “The commission has given various orders to the department to make suo moto declaration of its various schemes, names of beneficiaries and other details under its obligations (under the RTI Act). The department for the last six months has been defying the orders of the commission and refusing to obey these orders.”
He directed the PIO to ensure that all the earlier orders issued by the CIC are complied by April 20. The commission also asked the PIO to send an e-mail report to it.
“The report must include measures taken to fulfill disclosure obligations under section-4, including making information available on your official website as well as hard copies of the information at the department’s offices,” the information commissioner directed.
The commission also asked the department to tell it of the “measures put in place to ensure regular updating of the information uploaded on the websites and made available at the offices”.