Sunday, November 13, 2011

Re: [HumJanenge] Citizens Grievance Redress Draft Bill 2011- how far citizen-friendly?

Please go to www.darpg.gov.in and find the copy of the draft under
what is new segment on right side of the webpage.

On 11/13/11, Israel Jayakaran <israel@jayakaran.com> wrote:
> Dear Beniwal,
>
> When did the Govt put the draf bill of Citizens rightsd to
> Grievance redressal on the web? Could you please give me the reference. I
> would like to resond to the draft.
> Thank you.
>
> Israel Jayakaran, Colonel (Retd),
> Signals, Veteran.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: capt beniwal
> To: humjanenge@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2011 7:47 AM
> Subject: Re: [HumJanenge] Citizens Grievance Redress Draft Bill 2011- how
> far citizen-friendly?
>
>
> Beside other anti citizen provisions in the bill , the worst is making of
> a Head of department as judicial authority. HoD should only be an Appellate
> Authority and no more. The whole bill must be similar to the RTI Act 2005.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: Chitta Behera <chittabehera1@yahoo.co.in>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, 12 November 2011 7:20 PM
> Subject: [HumJanenge] Citizens Grievance Redress Draft Bill 2011- how far
> citizen-friendly?
>
>
> Citizens Grievance Redress Draft Bill 2011- how far citizen-friendly?
>
>
> Spurred on by the strident campaign of Anna Hazare for a comprehensive
> anti-graft legislation in the shape of Jan Lokpal Bill, the Government of
> India in the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances has
> already made its first positive response by way of mooting a draft law
> called Citizens Right to Grievance Redress Bill 2011. This draft law along
> with an overview was placed on the website of the said Department w.e.f. 2nd
> instant for eliciting public response receivable by 23rd November 2011. The
> draft bill, purportedly covered under item no.8 (actionable wrongs) of
> Concurrent List in the Constitution aims at institutionalizing an
> administrative mechanism in each public authority Central or provincial for
> ensuring time-bound delivery of goods and services as per the norms laid
> down in their respective Citizens' Charters coupled with appellate
> authorities at various levels for redressing the public grievances arising
> from any act of violation of the said Charters. Worth recollecting that Anna
> Hazare used to describe such a kind of rights based dispensation as the
> major plank of his Jan Lokpal Bill, and in fact, the latest version of the
> Bill (2.3) in its Chapter-XIII titled 'Grievance Redressal System' provides
> for the authorities and procedures that are required for ensuring a
> hassle-free regime of guaranteeing rights and entitlements to the public at
> large across the country. It therefore behoves the informed citizenry at
> large including the campaigners of Jan Lokpal Bill to partake of and
> contribute to the great ongoing debate as to whether and how far the
> Government mooted Draft Bill would cater to the pent-up aspiration of
> multitude of Indians for an easy access to their multifarious rights and
> entitlements in respect of public goods and services.
>
> While launching the draft bill in a joint press meet at New Delhi on 3rd
> Nov 2011 both Jairam Ramesh Minister Rural Development and V Narayanasamy
> Minister of State for Personnel asserted that it is only one component of a
> package of anti-corruption laws envisaged for enactment in winter session of
> Parliament commencing 23rd Nov, others being the Bills on Lokpal, Judicial
> Standards and Accountability, Public Procurement and Whistle Blowers
> Protection. Unlike Anna Hazare's original scheme of creating a single,
> integrated, monolithic law for addressing to issues of corruption and
> misfeasance at all levels across the State in its comprehensive sense of the
> term, that of the Government seems to split the whole dispensation into a
> few discrete, sectoral laws, each dedicated to tackle such issues in a
> specific, citizen-related domain of our multi-pillared and multilayered
> polity. From the standpoint of feasibility and optimality, the official
> scheme seems to present a better option, no doubt. If we build our
> anti-graft regime of governance on this centrifugal model, the lurking
> anxiety around Anna's model that it would vest absolute power in one
> colossal overlord watch-dogging the entire system from top to bottom would
> hold no ground. Yet, there also exists a flip side to the Government's model
> of decentralization, which if not remedied right now, might throw the entire
> system out of gear by way of pitting one law against another, and thereby
> rendering the existing scenario of mal-governance more chaotic and unwieldy.
> Given the preference for the decentralization model of the Government, what
> is however required utmost on the part of the latter is to ensure a seamless
> coherence and integrity among the host of laws bundled into the single
> basket, purported to reform the system of governance as a whole. By all
> reckoning, the RTI Act 2005 which being a pioneering statute heralded the
> much awaited era of governance reforms and is in place for last six years
> does also belong to this basket. The would-be, kindred laws need therefore
> to fall in line with letter and spirit of RTI Act. In a nutshell, the RTI
> Act 2005 which is on the whole an effective, user-friendly law and proved so
> by experience should serve as the matrix, respecting which the rest of the
> kindred laws need to be built up.
>
> The duo of Ministers while releasing the draft bill did also vociferate on
> its semblance to the RTI Act in terms of structure and procedures. But the
> moot point arises, is this assertion correct? A proper answer to this poser
> necessitates a scrutiny of the basic nuances of the Draft bill on grievance
> redress from the perspective of the RTI Act. The first and foremost
> distinction that makes RTI Act a class apart is its Section 22 providing for
> its overriding power vis-à-vis the rest of laws and instrumentalities of the
> State including the draconian Official Secrets Act 1923, whereas the Section
> 50 of the Draft Bill taking a contrarian position reads, "The provisions of
> this Act are in addition to and not in derogation of any other law for the
> time being in force". This single provision if retained in the would-be Act
> would render it vulnerable and ineffective from the day one of its
> enforcement, since there are still hundreds of laws in force across the
> country which not only lack in any time-limit for the delivery of public
> goods and services, but also allow for discretion to the Ministers and
> bureaucrats in distributing largesse to the persons whomsoever they like to
> oblige.
>
> The next striking difference between the two concerns the penalty
> provision against the errant public servants. While Section 20 (1) of RTI
> Act provides for a fine of Rs.250/- per a day's delay extending to a maximum
> of Rs.25,000/- leviable on the Public Information Officer proved guilty,
> Section 45 of the Draft bill merely and abstractly says that a 'lump-sum
> penalty' shall be imposed on the 'designated officers' and 'grievance
> redress officers' on account of the 'mala fide action' on their part and the
> rate of such penalty shall be 'specified from time to time as prescribed in
> the rules framed under this Act'. As regards the rule making power, Section
> 51 has vested it to the 'appropriate government', which going by the
> definition in Section 2(b) means Central Government or State Government.
> But, as everyone knows pretty well, the basic reason behind the success
> story of RTI Act is its clear provision for a specified amount of hefty fine
> in addition to the disciplinary proceedings, which drove the concerned
> officer, actuated by a fear of penalty, to act more or less as per the
> mandate of law. If the power to specify the amount of fine, as envisaged
> under the Draft bill, is placed under the Rule making power of the Centre
> and State Governments and that too exercisable by them from time to time, it
> may so happen that a Government might not volunteer to specify the amount of
> fine at all, or would specify such a ridiculously low amount as to be of no
> consequence to the habitual defaulters among the officers. In fact, as per
> the Section 7 of the recently enforced Delhi (Right of Citizen to time bound
> delivery of services) Act, 2011 the defaulting officer is liable to pay only
> Rs.10/- per day's delay, maximum amount being limited to Rs.200/-. It is now
> an open secret that the Delhi Act has remained, nay, shall ever remain a
> non-starter precisely on account of its ludicrous provision around penalty.
> Thus, if the Central Government really wants the public servants to deliver
> the public goods and services timely and properly as per the citizens
> charter, the proposed draft law itself, like the RTI Act, ought to specify a
> hefty amount of penalty against the errant officer, and shouldn't abandon
> this crucial matter to the discretionary rule-making power of the Centre or
> States.
>
> As is well known, the RTI Act under Section 25 provides for a
> comprehensive annual report on the state of implementation of the Act as
> prepared by the concerned Information Commission to be submitted to the
> Parliament or State legislature, as the case may be, by the respective
> Government. It is a wholesome provision in the sense that the legislators of
> country are being kept abreast of the doings or misdoings of the public
> authorities in respect of the duties cast on the latter for giving effect to
> the mandate of the concerned law. But, woefully enough, such a provision is
> conspicuously absent from the draft law on grievance redress.
>
> Last but not the least, unlike the RTI Act which to its credit is a
> citizen-friendly law in fullest sense of the term, the proposed draft law on
> public grievances, for all its pro-citizen gestures, accommodates a highly
> pernicious provision potentially poised against the appellant citizens vide
> Sections 23 and 39, which are spaciously captioned as 'Proceedings before
> the Commission to be judicial proceedings'. Clothed in the hard-hitting
> professional jargons of law, it defies comprehension even by an average
> lawyer, let alone the common citizens whom the proposed law ironically seeks
> to serve and save. The provision says, all proceedings before the Grievance
> Redressal Commission at Centre or in a State "shall be deemed to be judicial
> proceedings within the meaning of sections 193 and 228 of the Indian Penal
> Code and the Commission shall be deemed to be a civil court for the purposes
> of sections 345 and 346 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973". Precisely
> speaking, Section 193 of IPC provides for 'punishment for false evidence',
> which may extend to 3 years of imprisonment of either description coupled
> with an unspecified amount of fine, while its Section 228 provides for
> punishment for 'Intentional insult or interruption to public servant sitting
> in any stage of a judicial proceeding', which may extend to six months of
> simple imprisonment or a fine of Rs.1000/- or both. Coming to CrPC, its
> Section 345 prescribes 'Procedures in certain cases of contempt' that may
> result in imposition of a fine extending to Rs.200/- and in default of its
> payment, simple imprisonment for maximum 1 month. Section 346 of CrPC
> prescribes 'Procedure where Court considers that case should not be dealt
> with under Section 345', which vests the Court with the power inter alia to
> forward the case of an offender to a Magistrate, who shall deal with the
> case, 'as if it were instituted on a police report'. Under the
> circumstances, the proponents of the draft bill should and must explain,
> against whom such draconian provisions are mooted, if not the common
> citizens, in whose name it has been dedicated.
>
> (Chitta Behera, 4A Jubilee Tower, Choudhury Bazar, Cuttack-9, Mobile:
> 9437577546, Dt 12.11.2011)
>
>
>


--
Dr. Sandeep Kumar Gupta
989, Sector 15-A, Opposite bishnoi Colony, Hisar-125001, INDIA
Phone: 91-99929-31181

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