Need Help: Seeking help relating to (2nd round) reply from First Appellate Authority

[murgie]

In the case of a request from RBI made initially in April 2007, my request was denied, I appealed and that was denied by the FAA. Then I made a 2nd appeal to the CIC, which was heard on April 21, 2008. The CIC remanded my request to the RBI, and suggested some fresh communication between RBI and me (to determine the exact format of electronic compliance filings with it). Nothing very useful took place (section 4 compliance with making available circulars detailing format of filings is not something RBI takes seriously), and my 2nd request to the RBI CPIO produced only a nonsense (and plainly arrogant) reply. When I appealed to the RBI FAA, I got the response that I include below.

I am in the process of preparing to appeal yet again to the CIC, and I have a question arising from the claim made by this FAA below: "Since the CIC heard your appeal before, the RBI FAA's office does not come into the picture any more. Take your stuff to the CIC." I see this as only a wicked attempt to exploit the extraordinary delay at the CIC, which may very well come back yet again and simply ask RBI to rehear my appeal. I realize I have little choice in this matter at this stage but to persist with this process regardless of how long it takes. As far as I can tell there is nothing in the RTI Act that justifies the RBI FAA's claim. Am I missing something? Please help.

I also want to know what options there are at the CIC, if the CIC again lazily remands this to the RBI, when the facts are fairly simple and it could very well decide the matter. For now I'm stuck with my IC (Tiwari) but is there some possibility of protesting and seeking a different IC or a larger bench to review what he does? Please help. Thank you. Best,

Murgie
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RBI FAA's 2nd round response:
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"Authority, Appellate
to Murgie Krishnan
cc "Unnikrishnan, A"
date Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 8:49 AM
subject RE: CIC Order F.No.CIC/AT/A/2007/01468
mailed-by rbi.org.in

Reply

Dear Sir
Please refer to your e-mails dated July 07, 2008 and July 10, 2008 on the captioned subject. In this regard, it is advised that since the present proceedings are in pursuance of the order of Central Information Commission, the remedy sought by you would lie with the Hon'ble Commission, in case you are aggrieved in any manner by the way in which the Reserve Bank of India had complied with the order of that authority, and not with the Appellate Authority of the Reserve Bank of India.

p.Appellate Authority

[jps50]

I think reapproaching CIC and waiting for the turn is the only way out. CIC is now in urgent need of new and different blood transfusion.

[karira]

Murgie,

Point 9 of the mentioned CIC order states:

http://cic.gov.in/CIC-Orders/AT-22042008-01.pdf

In view of the above, it is directed that the appellant shall, within two weeks of the receipt of this order, give to the CPIO, Shri V.S.Das a precise list of the information which he wishes to have and the format in which he wants that information. The experts at the RBI will examine the appellant’s requisition and inform him within three weeks of the receipt of this requisition from the appellant, about how much of the information as held by the public authority, they could provide to the appellant within the technological limitation of the system, on payment of fee and further-fee as laid-down in Section 7(3) of the RTI Act.

Point 7 ends with:

During the hearing it appeared that both their positions could do with some revisiting.

A simple reading of the above two points, makes it clear that you are starting afresh - its like Act II, Scene 1 of a play. The ACT I is already over.

My understanding and based on some of the CIC decisions I have seen:

Act I, till now:

You applied - PIO replied - First Appeal - Second Appeal - Matter remanded back to RBI for discussion

Act II :

You discussed with PIO - you are not satisfied with the PIO reply - hence First Appeal once again to FAA (in this particular Act II only)

You are making a First Appeal to the FAA regarding the new reply of the PIO and not regarding the matter pending with CIC.

Sec 19(1) gives the right to make a First Appeal to any person aggrieved by the PIO's order.
That means "any order of the PIO" is appealable. PIO gave you a new order, you are aggrieved by it and you made First Appeal. The "present proceedings" are a result of that and NOT as a result of "pursuance of CIC's order.....".
The FAA better hear your appeal.
Otherwise you are being deprived of your right of First Appeal.

Make the FAA read the RTI Act and the above parts of the CIC decision.

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I hope you also picked on RBI for stating that:

The respondents submitted that the information which the appellant requested pertained to the period 1999 to 2007. Much of this data is stored in the Oracle Software System (Older Versions) and has not been transferred to the new system. As the information is in a different format than what the appellant had requested, to bring it into the format of the appellant, new queries were needed to be put to the computer, which would involve writing new programs. The respondents stated that the system was so old and fragile that it would not be able to cope up with new queries that may be made to it. The present system is being used for only a limited range of queries and is barely able to cope with those. The system doesn’t have the capacity to take on new queries as the database is loaded with huge volumes of information, because of which, even the simplest of the queries took long time to be processed. Frequently, the system hung-up and needed rebooting.

RBI needs to be told that this is precisely why there was a need to introduce the RTI Act in India !

Sec 4(1) states:

1. Every public authority shall—
a. maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and the form which facilitates the right to information under this Act and ensure that all records that are appropriate to be computerised are, within a reasonable time and subject to availability of resources, computerised and connected through a network all over the country on different systems so that access to such records is facilitated;

Sec 4(1) came into force "immediately" (June 2005). What is RBI doing till now ? Sleeping ? Why haven't they upgraded the legacy systems ? They cannot take shelter that they are using "Oracle older version" and hence difficult to disclose data. They are supposed to regularly update.

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Are 30 days over ?
When is the last date of First Appeal ?

If there is time then let me put the thinking cap on and we will try again like we did with SEBI (by the way the hard copy has now arrived - do you need a scanned copy ? - it is same as the soft copy).