Swamy’s latest battle: how to get IIT dues

[karira]

As reported by Charu Sudan Kasturi in telegraphindia.com on 08 July 2009:
The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Nation | Swamy’s latest battle: how to get IIT dues

Swamy’s latest battle: how to get IIT dues



[LEFT]New Delhi, July 7: Subramanian Swamy is now haunting Kapil Sibal’s human resource development ministry with persistent demands for dues he claims are unpaid from his days at IIT Delhi, after years of mounting legal challenges to Sonia Gandhi and Jayalalithaa.[/LEFT]

[LEFT]Almost two decades after he ended a tumultuous relationship with the IIT where he taught economics — to become a cabinet minister in the Chandra Shekhar government — Swamy has accused the HRD ministry of withholding his dues. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]Swamy has in the past led high-voltage campaigns against UPA chairperson Sonia’s “foreign origins” and former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa’s alleged corruption, and has stalled the Sethusamudram project. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]Through a series of Right to Information Act appeals, Swamy has now demanded all HRD ministry notings on his dues from 1969 to 1991 when he taught at IIT Delhi. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]“If the IIT or the HRD ministry think they can get away with harassing me, they’re messing with the wrong person,” Swamy, 69, told The Telegraph from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a visiting professor at Harvard University. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]Swamy said he may soon approach the courts — like he did while challenging Sonia and Jayalalithaa — to get his dues along with the interest for the entire period he has had to wait. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]The Janata Party president said he had written to HRD minister Sibal challenging him, as a lawyer, to defend the ministry’s actions in allegedly denying him his dues. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]His appeals, under standard RTI applications, have triggered panic at the ministry because officers have discovered that they no longer possess records of Swamy’s dues from his IIT days. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]“Given Swamy’s history, with Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalithaa and others, we are naturally very concerned because we fear he could entangle us legally, too,” a senior official in the ministry said. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]Swamy was sacked in 1972 as professor, three years after joining the IIT. He alleges he was the target of a political conspiracy because he publicly opposed Indira Gandhi’s bank nationalisation and other “socialist” government policies and challenged pro-government “communists” at the neighbouring Jawaharlal Nehru University. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]He challenged his dismissal legally, and in 1991 won a case at the Tis Hazari district courts which dubbed his sacking illegal and asked the IIT to repay him his emoluments for the intervening period. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]But the IIT, Swamy alleges, refused to pay him the dues ordered by the court. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]During the period when he was out of a teaching job in India, Swamy often taught at Harvard. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]“The IIT argued that they will deduct the amount I earned at Harvard from my dues. But given that I earned in dollars at Harvard, if they deduct what I earned there, I will be paying IIT and not the other way around. It is ridiculous,” Swamy said. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]But his requests have left the HRD ministry stumped and nervous as they cannot find the file containing notings related to Swamy’s dues. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]“It is so old that the file has probably been destroyed. But we don’t know what to write in our reply because we fear we could get into trouble,” an official said. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]Under the RTI Act, enacted late in 2005, information up to 20 years in the past can be sought. So, technically, the HRD ministry can argue that it is essentially required to provide Swamy with information only from 1989 onwards. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]Further, since the RTI Act came only in 2005, several government offices have in the past argued that they could not have been expected to retain files from before the enactment of the law. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]But the Central Information Commission — the apex referee on the act — has on numerous occasions lambasted the latter argument and demanded that the government agency concerned at least provide proof of destruction of documents. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]The HRD ministry, however, does not even have any record of destroying the file with the information sought by Swamy — raising concern among officials. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]But it is Swamy’s reputation that haunts ministry officials, they accepted. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]For a decade between 1993 and 2003, Swamy legally hounded two-time chief minister Jayalalithaa, accusing her of corruption in procuring land from the Tamil Nadu Small Industries Corporation as chief minister between 1991-96. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]He has also accused Sonia of misleading the nation over her citizenship, in petitions to the Supreme Court. [/LEFT]

[LEFT]In 2007, the Supreme Court stayed the Sethusamudram project to build a shipping channel through the Palk Straits on the basis of a petition by Swamy. This case is still sub judice.


[/LEFT]

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[Atul Patankar]

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Under the RTI Act, enacted late in 2005, information up to 20 years in the past can be sought

How one wishes some media people read the act before reporting!