Chennai: A two-year delay by revenue officials to furnish information under the RTI Act enabled the sale of a woman’s property to another person without her knowledge. The information commission ordered ₹25,000 as compensation, which was collected from the public information officer concerned as a penalty for not performing his duties.The victim, M Yashodha of Villupuram district, filed two RTI pleas in 2023 seeking documents from the Town Survey Land Register (TSLR) regarding the settlement details of particular survey numbers in Tiruvallur district. She later approached the state information commission in the same year with her second appeal seeking action against the public information officer concerned.In Feb this year, when the appeal came up for hearing before information commissioner R Priyakumar, the appellant said she received the required information only in Dec last year, but by then the land in question, which belongs to her mother, was sold to somebody else without her knowledge.The PIO submitted that her original petition addressed to the survey inspector was transferred to taluk deputy survey inspector in Sept 2023, and added that the post remained vacant. The PIO said he joined five months ago and furnished the copy of the reply.Recording the submission, the commission directed director of survey and land records to inquire with assistant director for not appointing a PIO for nearly a year and collect ₹25,000 from the officer as a penalty to pay it to the aggrieved petitioner.In its compliance report, the director of survey and land records said that there was a PIO during the said period and added that memo has been issued against him to initiate departmental action. The director also collected ₹25,000 from the PIO and handed it over to the petitioner.
