Southern Railway gets an RTI dose

Southern Railway gets an RTI dose

Dogged tenacity of a consumer activist in Chennai has finally left the Southern Railway with no choice but to part with information he had sought under the RTI Act.

T. Sadagopan, vice president of the Tamil Nadu Progressive Consumer Centre, had sought details of EMU train timings, the schedule of which had triggered agitations and protests by passengers last year. It had led to intervention by the then minister of state for Railways R Velu, who had directed restoration of the timings.

But the Railway authorities had ignored his direction, the petitioner said. Sadagopan has now obtained a recent order from the Central Information Commission in favour of his original RTI Act petition , which was sought to be dodged by the SR authorities on one ground or another.

The Commission order has also given relief to the petitioner directing the Railway Public Information Officer (PIO) to facilitate an inspection of the relevant records and give photocopies that the appellant wanted up to 200 pages free of cost.

The PIO had asked the applicant to pay Rs 381 as an allowance fee to the railway authorities. The applicant had contested it stating that asking him to pay was against the concept of the RTI Act 2005. It was unconstitutional, he stated.

Allowing his appeal, the Central Information Commission in its order dated May 12, 2009, asked the Southern Railway to furnish the details free of cost The original application dated May 29 last year had sought a series of information relating to the EMU suburban services on the Chennai-Tiruvallur-Arakkonam section.