By Mayank Aggarwal
New Delhi, Dec 21 (IANS) Thousands of files relating to street-side hawkers in Delhi go missing due to “fundamental systemic corruption” in the civic body, an exasperated Central Information Commission (CIC) has noted, adding this needs to be looked at if Delhi “is to live by any set of rules and laws”.

“In the entire MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) system thousands of tehbazari (street hawkers) files are claimed to be ‘not traceable’. There appears to be some fundamental systemic corruption by which the allottees of tehbazaris are bled by corrupt officers by claiming that their files are missing…”, Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said.

“… it is necessary that some authority should take cognizance of this if the capital of this country is to live by any set of rules and laws,” he added.

The CIC made the observation on an application filed by Ajay Kumar, a street-side vendor of Vikas Nagar in west Delhi, who had sought copies of some papers relating to his tehbazaari file from the municipal corporation.

The MCD officials responsible for giving information, P. Bose and Ashok Kumar, allegedly supplied incorrect information. He then approached the First Appellate Authority (FAA), but that too ruled against him.

Upset with the order, the vendor then filed an appeal with the CIC.

The information commission criticised the two MCD officials for “collaborating” to deny Ajay Kumar his vendor rights and has also fined them.

“The commission sees clear evidence that the holders of information P. Bose and Ashok Kumar have collaborated to deny the appellant his tehbazari rights by not giving the correct information and claiming that the file was ‘not traceable’,” Gandhi noted in his order.

“It is apparent that just because the matter came before the commission the truth has been acknowledged that the appellant is eligible for the tehbazari,” he noted.

“No reasonable cause has been brought before the commission for providing the false information initially that the appellant was not allottee of any tehbazari site,” Gandhi observed.

During the hearing, the cases of four other hawkers cropped up. They claimed other people had usurped their registered hawking site in collusion with the MCD.

“This is indeed a very distressing state of affairs and the respondent (a MCD official) admits that this is indeed the case. This commission has no jurisdiction in these matters but hopes that those who have jurisdiction in such matters will take a note of this,” Gandhi noted.

“P. Bose and Ashok Kumar claim that since the information commission called for a hearing, they made efforts to trace the file which they miraculously found, and therefore gave the correct information on Nov 6 that the appellant had indeed been allotted a tehbazari site. It appears that there may have been mala fide in giving false information initially,” he observed in the order.

The CIC ruled that this was a fit case for penalising the officials who gave incorrect information to the appellant.

“Since the delay in providing the correct information has been over 100 days, the commission is passing an order penalizing P. Bose and Ashok Kumar for Rs.25,000 each,” the order noted.

The commission directed the MCD commissioner to recover the amount from the duo’s salary in five months, beginning in December, by deducting Rs.5,000 every month.

(Mayank Aggarwal can be contacted at mayank.a@ians.in)