Paradip Port Trust lists officials’ tour details as ‘confidential’

The office orders,posted on the website of PPT,have come at a time when the tour diaries of the Chief Justice of India and the union ministers are open to public scrutiny under the Act. PPT currently manages the biggest port in Orissa at Paradip.

What is surprising is that the PPT management has justified the denial of information under Section 8 read with Section 4 of the Act.

The two sections don’t apply in the said case as the Act makes it very clear that information means noting in note sheets and tour diaries of officials.

It’s not just the tour diary that the PPT considers beyond the purview of the RTI Act. The administrative department of the PPT,in separate office orders,has listed items like property returns of employees,note sheets of files containing observation of employees and officers,staff selection committee and departmental promotion committee proceedings as classified/confidential documents.

Other documents barred by the PPT office order are answer sheets of candidates appearing for the written test in connection with different posts of PPT and documents relating to tendering process in respect of different works.

PPT chairman K Raghuramaiah,an Indian Railway Service officer,sought to justify the denial of information,saying the Act provides such freedom. “We have used the necessary provisions,” he told The Indian Express without elaborating.

RTI activists are aghast over PPT’s action. Prominent RTI activist

Arvind Kejriwal said PPT’s orders were “malafide and mischievous”.

“There is nothing called confidential and secret under the RTI Act. No information can be denied and certainly not tour diaries,tour logs and note sheets. Only some information can be denied under section 8 of the Act. But the application of Section 8 is surely malafide,” Kejriwal told The Indian Express.

Incidentally,last year the PPT denied information on tour bills and official tour diaries of K Raghuramaiah to one Biswajit Mohanty of Cuttack,saying the disclosure of information regarding the tour diary would harm the competitive position and commercial confidentiality of PPT since his “official tour is meant to improve the trade interests of the port”. “The disclosure of place of stay during leave period may endanger the life and physical safety of the chairman,” PPT said in its reply.

Mohanty later petitioned the Central Information Commission,which in December last year directed the PPT to give a copy of the note sheets of the file dealing with plot cancellation during the period April 1 2004 to December 7,2007. “I see no reason why this item of information should not be allowed to be disclosed to the appellant. It doesn’t attract any of the exemption sub-sections under Section 8(1) of the RTI Act,” commissioner AN Tiwari observed. However,the PPT is yet to comply.

“It appears that PPT loves to operate under a cloak of secrecy thereby refusing to submit itself to the twin canons of accountability and transparency which should be the hallmark of all public bodies run with taxpayers’ money,” Mohanty said.

RTI documents accessed by The Indian Express have revealed that the PPT has failed to carry out the physical verification of its fixed assets,stores and stocks during 2005-06 as observed by the CAG. During that fiscal,the port held a total of Rs 1844.1 crore worth of fixed assets and stores.

Earlier,information regarding decision-making for allotment,cancellation and re-allotment of plots to exporters working out of PPT had been denied on the basis of the same office order,classifying the information as secret. A plot in Paradip is worth crores of Rupees in view of the booming export market for minerals in the State.