I approached PIO of Uttarakhand Power Corporation on 1/6/2009 at their corporate office at Dehradun to file RTI application. On refusal to receive application fee in cash by the PIO, complaint was filed before State Information Commission Dehradun, registered as Complaint No.2225/2009-10.
I received copy of notice fixing date 15/07/2009, i.e. for today at 11:30 Hrs. In the expectation of complaint to be heard at the time fixed I got seated at 11:30 at the hearing room of CIC. After long await I could only understand that the time notified in the notice of 11:30 has no relevance and my complaint may be heard in due course of the day as usually happens in case of court hearings. (Which ultimately came for hearing at 3:30 PM)
The first thing came to mind that if State Information Commissions function like civil courts as to keep appellants/complainants waiting for the whole day then one day people will refrain from approaching the commissions as by the end of day it will appear to punish own self rather than taking to task the public authorities at fault.
I had an opportunity to appear before Central Information Commission New Delhi, where the parties are notified by the approximate time of hearing in the day and not one common time for all the cases, which is highly appreciable.
State Commissions must amend their self procedure to achieve the ultimate object of RTI Act.
Surprisingly the officer(PIO) complained against was well aware of late hearing of the matter and just devoted his minimum time by reaching the Information Commission at the nick of time in his official car showing how privileged they are as against ordinary citizens.
The system of enquiry in complaint matters, by not giving opportunity to complaint to submit his view point on the submissions/ reply filed by PIO complaint against is also against natural justice which also happened in my case ultimately and the PIO went away scot free after arguing all his self praise.