RTI on RTIs: After the Autopsy…

RTI on RTIs: After the Autopsy…

RBI, CAG and IBBI Do Not Know Their Own Records Pertaining to the RBI-Appointed CoC for DHFL under the Ill-Conceived IBC!

Posted on 14th October, 2024 (GMT 16:15 hrs)

ABSTRACT

The post discusses a Right to Information (RTI) application submitted to the Supreme Court of India regarding the accountability of various institutions like the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board (IBBI) in the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) case. It highlights the lack of transparency in RTI responses and issues with governmental portals, raising concerns about possible intentional obstructions and secrecy by the ruling party. The post also reflects on India’s political economy under increasing opacity.

We have submitted an RTI Application to the Supreme Court of India on 14th October, 2024, in connection with our earlier series of appeals to be found in the following two posts:

https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/2024/08/22/rbi-appointed-coc-for-dhfls-total-expenditure-an-rti-to-the-rbi/

https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/2024/08/24/have-the-rbi-and-ibbi-lost-their-accountability-an-rti-to-the-cag-india/

We had analyzed the “typical” replies by the RTI authorities in this post further:

Given such a scenario, we thought it to be judicious to send our plea to the apex court of India for necessary action in this regard, and so we did.

The following is the text of our latest RTI application:

I had previously submitted RTI inquiries to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (RTI No. CAGIN/R/E/24/02309), Reserve Bank of India (RTI Nos. RBIND/R/T/24/00826, RBIND/R/E/24/04068, RBIND/R/E/24/04068/1, RBIND/A/E/24/00806), and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (RTI Nos. ISBBI/R/T/24/00020, ISBBI/R/X/24/00001, ISBBI/A/E/24/00029) regarding the following:

1. Kindly provide details of the total expenditure incurred by the RBI-appointed Committee of Creditors (CoC) for Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL), with a detailed breakdown of the same.
   Additionally, please inform me of the following:
2. The amount of funds reserved by the CoC for DHFL for future expenditure related to litigation.
3. The source of these funds allocated for future legal expenses.

I requested specific and precise information to address these queries. However, after a series of transfers from one public authority to another, the aforementioned authorities (including the CPIOs and the FAAs) responded with their inability to provide the requested information.

In light of this, I kindly request to be informed of the appropriate authority that holds the relevant information and can legitimately respond to my queries.

https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/supreme-court-rti.pdf

RTI REPLIES AND FIRST APPEAL REPLIESDownload

We even tried to forward these very concerns in the form of replicated RTI applications through the RTI portal to the Presidential Secretariat and Prime Minister’s Office respectively, but without amounting to any success even after trying for five-six times consecutively! Each time, the payment gateway somehow failed to proceed with the transaction and give a confirmation, even though the money got deducted.

The screen often froze and started showing the following without an explanation:

Why is this the case, after all? What’s wrong with these indispensable governmental websites that functional as the key mechanisms of the democratic pressure cooker? Are they being paralyzed intentionally or deliberately with a malicious intent on the part of the present ruling party of India? It appears to be the case.

(TO BE UPDATED…)

APPENDIX

Jugupsā, Will To Hide, Erit Celare

In the context of the contemporary Indian political economy (which has been reduced to nothing more than an Orwellian state), even though the panopticon Big Brother is watching us, we have found that the present ruling party is maintaining secrecy. This special “will to hide” is totally an one-way traffic. In the epoch of information society, the masters of the universe (and of course, BJP as their puppet!) are lacking transparency when it comes to the question of having access to public records. The following cases exhibit this phenomenon vividly:

1. Electoral Bonds Scheme (though the list of donors of political donation or otherwise bribe is now available in the public domain due to tremendous pressure from the apex court)
2. PM CARES Fund
3. RTIs (OBMA activists experienced the opacity in the responses of RTI authorities⤡; peculiarly enough, as it is claimed that political parties are not public authorities, they do not fall under the purview of the RTI)
4. Opposition to Live Streaming (as is being observed presently in the case of the RG Kar Movement)
5. Acts of Vandalism to destroy or cover up crucial evidence (again observed in the RG Kar Case)
6. Controlling the Fourth Pillar of Democracy, i.e., mass media⤡, which is totally appropriated by the ruling party via the medium of its crony business allies to manufacture the consent of the citizens.
7. The ruling party wants to pass the “Broadcasting Bill“, which, if its materializes (along with the already existent, draconian Digital Personal Data Protection Act that is an anatomo-bio-political tool), would also hand over the reins of the fourth and fifth pillars of democracy directly within the grips of the ruling party.
8. IT Cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Amit Malviya, is serving as the national convener of the IT cell, is an expert in spreading fake news through the fifth pillar of democracy. He is always caught up by the fact checkers, whistleblowers like Alt.News, but the venoms of such false and morphed information are easily consumed by the andh and gandhbhakts.

and so on…

Thus, the ruling party’s “will to know” (their subjects’ docile bodies through NRC-NPR-CAA-DPA⤡ ⤡ ⤡) leads to the “will to hide” by satisfying their “will to power”. In fact, they are not simply “hiding”, but also utilizing deferring or delaying tactics months after months through arbitrary game of transfers (remembering Krishn Chander’s Short Story on a poet, who was bogged down by a fallen tree. Before rescuing him from such a disastrous condition, the bureaucratic system was transferring files from one department to another without any solution. This delay due to red-tapeism consequently led to the death of the poet!). On the other hand, the non-conformists, heroic elite (rather, organic intellectualism) have chosen the path of “will to suffer” in their Sisyphusian (dis-)enchantment. The trajectory among all these wills (“will to know” through “will to record/archive”, “will to power”, “will to hide”, “will to suffer”) create a spider web or a well-structured plexus that is often intruded upon by the neighbourhood territories, whereby the thresholds of the rhizomatic territoriality are infringed from time to time.