Put MLAs’ attendance on public domain: Info panel to Assembly

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 29

The State Information Commission (SIC) has recommended to the Haryana Vidhan Sabha to take a decision for placing the attendance record of MLAs on the public domain, as is the practice in Parliament and many other state Assemblies.

State Chief Information Officer Yash Pal Singal, taking up an appeal by RTI activist Harinder Dhingra, also asked the Assembly to provide the appellant information within four weeks on its budget and expenditure made on running the House proceedings after the BJP government came to power in October, 2014.

Dhingra had sought information about the number of working days of the current state Assembly till date, the number of times the Assembly had been adjourned, the number of days each MLA attended the House since their election in October, 2014, and the expenditure incurred on running the Assembly.

The State Public Information Officer (SPIO) of the Assembly only provided information on the first two points.

On the appeal, the First Appellate Authority (FAA) of the Assembly informed Dhingra that “information on point 3 (attendance of MLAs) was not provided to you in view of the orders dated February 27, 2017, of the Speaker obtained by the Chamber Bench, which is the custodian of the records of the attendance of the MLAs”.

As regards point 4 (expenditure on running the current Assembly from October, 2014, till date), the FAA said the information was not provided since nothing specific on this point was available with the Assembly Secretariat.

Dhingra also sought from the Lok Sabha Secretariat copies of the attendance register of all 10 MPs from the state, he was informed that the information was available on its website.

The Lok Sabha Secretariat also replied that it was possible that a member might have attended the session on a particular day but not signed in the register, but even then the information was available on website. Singal observed in the order that the total budget and expenditure incurred in running the Assembly must be available with the public authority and be shared with the appellant.

Singal also directed the SPIO of the Assembly to provide information about the budget and expenditure to Dhingra within four weeks and file the status report by August 31.

RTI query

Harinder Dhingra, an RTI activist, had sought information about the number of working days of the current state Assembly till date, the number of times the Assembly had been adjourned, the number of days each MLA attended the House since their election in October, 2014, and the expenditure incurred on running the Assembly.