Pune: State chief information commissioner (CIC) Rahul Pande has directed the public works department (PWD) to overhaul disclosure of project details on its web portal, after finding out that two near-identical orders regarding updating the website issued by earlier chiefs in 2015 and 2022 had been ignored.Pande passed the order last month while disposing of the second appeal of a Thane resident, wherein the latter had sought disclosure of scheme-wise funds, contractor details and project status on the PWD website as well as its divisions and sub-divisions.According to the order, Pande has directed the department’s additional chief secretary to instruct every divisional and sub-divisional officer to fall in line with disclosure norms under Section 4 (1) (b) (11) of the RTI Act “as per prevailing procedure.”No fresh monetary penalty was imposed on PWD officials this time. Pande closed the appeal with a direction that the public information officer “act in accordance with the above discussion” and had copies of the order forwarded to the state’s chief secretary and PWD’s additional chief secretary for action.Pande told TOI that it remained mandatory for departments to put out basic details. “It was surprising that despite repeated directions, the department did not follow suit. I will issue a reminder to the department again, since it’s been a month since the order,’’ he said.This was not the first incident where the PWD was called to task. The commission’s Konkan bench, then headed by a different information commissioner, had first ordered the same disclosures on July 15, 2015, in a separate appeal filed by a Sindhudurg resident. It had directed PWD to set up independent web portals for each sub-division at the time. The department responded with a compliance circular on Aug 25, 2015, to chief engineers across Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, Aurangabad and Amravati regions. Three public information officers were fined Rs500 each for withholding related information.The demand resurfaced in Feb 2022, when the then CIC, Sumit Mullick, was hearing an earlier appeal by the same applicant. He again gave PWD 60 days to update its website. The department issued fresh internal letters to field officers in 2020 and 2022 reiterating the instructions. Yet, photographs of the mahapwd.com portal that the complainant had submitted to the commission, dated July 19, 2023, showed the site’s data frozen at 2009-10 — five years behind even the update deadline set back in 2015.The current order said: “Each division and sub-division must run a separate web thread updated every three months, listing the name of the work, scheme details, the tender process and its status, the sanctioned amount and administrative approval, year-wise expenditure incurred, proposed expenditure and balance funds, payments made and pending, progress reports filed after departmental review, quality and completion certificates, final bill payment details and any show-cause notices issued to contractors for defective work along with rectification reports.”The order invokes the commission’s powers under Sections 19 (8) and 25 (5) of the RTI Act, cites the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kishan Chand Jain vs Union of India on public authorities’ duty to disclose information suo motu and references the chief minister’s repeated calls for a ‘tech-friendly and citizen-friendly’ administration.The complainant told the commission that PWD’s inaction, despite running an annual budget of Rs18,000 crore-Rs25,000 crore, amounted to “inexcusable negligence” and that citizens were being forced into repeated RTI battles for information the department was bound to disclose on its own.The commission agreed the lapse was serious, noting that complaints about PWD’s execution of works routinely reach the chief minister’s office, making proactive disclosure a necessity rather than a courtesy.
