HC junks govt plea to review order to pay Rs 1 L to RTI

The Bombay High Court today rejected a Maharashtra government plea to review its order to pay Rs 1 lakh to an RTI activist for covering the cost he had incurred in exposing a "scam", and expressed shock that the state felt the amount was a "burden".
"It will be difficult to comply with the court's order since this will impose a burden on the state exchequer," an application made by the state government through the Additional Transport Commissioner said today.
"In a meeting headed by the state Transport minister, it was decided that the court be urged to review its order since the exchequer is already burdened. Besides, the petitioner (the activist Shrikant Karve) had not made any specific prayer for such payment," said the state counsel Abhinandan Vagyani.

However, a bench of justices AS Oka and Anil Menon rejected the prayer.
"This is shocking. This person has helped unearth a scam, a problem within your system and has thus, helped you save on a lot of money. But the state feels paying him is burdensome," it said, adding "the application is rejected,"
On November 17, irked with non-compliance of its orders on regulating the issuance and renewal of fitness certificates for vehicles, the bench had directed the government to appoint a senior IAS officer to probe irregularities within the Regional Transport Offices (RTO) across Maharashtra.

The bench had given the direction while hearing a PIL filed by Pune-based RTI activist Shrikant Karve.

Since 2013, Karve has submitted several documents to show that RTOs across the state were granting fitness certificate to vehicles without subjecting them to mandatory tests.
This had also been resulting in frequent accidents, Karve had shown.
On the last hearing, Karve had also informed the court of an officer who was posted at Solapur, but had issued fitness certificates from Pune without having any authority to do so.
The court had orally observed at the time that this could just be the "tip of the iceberg," and had ordered an inquiry.