Stunning replies...now what?

I received two responses from the government in last 15 days. And both were absolutely stunning.

Their first response to my question on Cabinet Secretary's appointment read as follows( and I quote it verbatim here):

"The file for the appointment to the post of the Cabinet Secretary is not sent to the President of India, who is the appointing authority of the Cabinet Secretary."

How does the above mentioned sentence in English-language speaking world make sense? And they give to me in writing an admission of illegality which I was always suspecting and pursuing since last one and a half years now.

I am stunned.

Their second response to my email send to grievances' cell( this is different from RTI) pointing out that the law be followed by having the appointing authority to appoint the Cabinet Secretary was given the response that( I quote verbatim again) :

"This is a suggestion and not a grievance."

An email saying that the law be followed is treated as a suggestion. Goodness !!

I am stunned to the point of numbness. I have been trying to avoid a PIL at all cost. But this is pushing me to a corner. I'll be forced to file a PIL.

God help!

New Cabinet Secretary is being appointed

Ajit Kumar Seth has been approved to be the next Cabinet Secretary. The government's communication is here .

I had already sent reminders to the government that they themselves agree that the President should appoint the Cabinet Secretary. Now after the above mentioned Prime Minister's approval to the appointment the President must appoint Sh Ajit Kumar Seth.

I have sent another reminder today which is pasted below. I am keeping what I am doing in public because you must know whats going on in real time now.

Dear Sir,

This is with reference to my grievance registration number DOPAT/E/2011/00131 and in reference to approval of appointment of Mr Ajit Kumar Seth to the post of Cabinet secretary vide Secretariat of Appointments Committee of the Cabinet(ACC) communication No 15/10/2011-EO(SM.I) dated 24th May 2011.

Kindly note that the President is the appointing authority of Cabinet Secretary per information provided under RTI Act. The above mentioned communication number of ACC is also sent to the President’s Secretariat. Shri Ajit Kumar Seth is approved to take charge from 13th June, 2011. Kindly ensure that the law of the land is followed by having the appointing authority to appoint Mr Ajit Kumar Seth as the next Cabinet Secretary as approved by the ACC. The President can hold no discretion in this matter of his/her own as the President is bound by advice of his/her ministers.

This is my second reminder to you on the subject for providing a redressal of my grievance.

With regards,

Milan Gupta.

Judgment of CIC

Here's the link to the 7th March judgment of CIC dimissing my appeal.

Deepak Sandhu was the Information Commissioner hearing the appeal. The Deputy Secretary, Rajiv Mittal, had also been summoned.

The appeal was not be heard by Deepak Sandhu because she is not assigned the constitutional subjects. Yet, she passed an order.

The order is also not a speaking order, which means she should have explained her own reasons (in the sections of "Decision") and countering my reasons to justify her judgment.

I am more irritated by absence of an explanatory order than by the dismissal itself.

Some success...

Finally the morons sent me a proper reply.

Last, I had asked them " Who is the competent authority to appoint the Cabinet Secretary?".

They had replied : "The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet(ACC)."

So I reminded the bozos that the ACC consists of ministers and the ministers can appoint no one.

Finally, I got a convulated reply in which they said that they re-evaluated the matter in the Cabinet Secretariat and replied that the President of India is the competent authority to appoint the Cabinet Secretary.

I was elated with joy! They rescinded on their earlier answer and gave the right answer this time!

However, they are still sticking to the logic that the authority to appoint does not have to sign the appointment because President is just a figurehead or a rubber stamp. After all, the bureaucrats have to justify their illegal action of bypassing the President, even though they have now admitted in writing that he is the authority to appoint the Cabinet Secretary.

God save us from this stupidity. Are they so dumb to be claiming this logic?

Even then, this reply was first taste of a success. At least I got the highest government department in the country to correct their assumptions regarding the appointment of and by the highest authorities.

I think I made an impact

I had been hounding the sarkari departments on the basic question that "Who orders appointments of the senior most sarkari officer?". This had been going on for a good last six-seven months of April 2010 onwards. You know I had been updating all that in this blogsite also.

There's this chap called as Rajiv Kumar Mittal in the Department of Personnel and Training(DoPT) who replied to the question and was kind of getting pissed off by my repeated queries. He had in fact transferred the application to another department but got it returned by them.

Finally he had replied that there are two things I am basically asking for and not one.

He said that same person who orders is not the same as the one who appoints as I was assuming. I think he took me for a shareef fellow.

So next, in that case I modified the question slightly, and asked him to tell me "Who appoints the senior most sarkari officer?" This was somewhere in early August 2010.

I think Mittal-ji realised that I had hit the nail with the right question this time.

And he , I believe, pissed off again by these questions on Secretary level appointments issued a guideline to all an sundry. Nobody had ever asked such a basic question. The guidelines were issued on 13 Aug 2010 and is on the same topic that I have raised in my RTI queries, by the same person whom I asked, after the same date when I posted them with the second query.

The link to his published guidelines is here.

You might also notice that the Mittal fellow has even highlighted in bold the specific areas which were asked in the RTI application as mentioned in my earlier blogs.

Such a guideline was last issued in '96. I think a simple RTI query forced this department to mend the matters right after 14 years. They have to. In '96 they had made the rules as classified information. Now they cannot keep such rules as secret.

And in '96 I wasn't interested in this area and there was no internet either to do all this research.

I am coming for them in 2010 and I have my armory with me.

This was just the first impact. I promise more.

Entering the unknown

I had asked that question to sarkar who issues orders appointing Cabinet Secretary? And they had given a vague non-specific reply.

I followed it up with a so called appeal on 19th of last month and I have now even got a reply from the department on my appeal filed.

They are saying basically now that you are making a fuss around here, and that there's a difference between who orders and who issues orders. And I looked into the mirror and thought that do I look that stupid as these guys think I am.

The recent reply goes on to say that Prime Minister approves the appointment and then some Under Secy issues the orders.

I am going to ask them then why didn't they tell specifically exactly which Under Secy issues the order in that case. They still know they can't tell because there really is no difference between the person authorized to order and person authorized to issue order. And if there really is a difference, then why don't they tell us who orders the appointment in that case?

Actually, so far these responses from the departments were predictable because you can't really expect machine-heads sloths to think at level of constitution and Westminster Parliamentary system and all.

Now, the appeal is supposed to go to Wajahat Habibullah, the CIC himself , in person and not to any other Information Commissioner. A google showd that he has been a student of history and constitution in J&K before joining the IAS in the 60s.

I am preparing the appeal nowadays and gathering evidence to convince him. So far I have found that I am on the right track because the official websites of UK and Canadian government , which follow the same Parliamentary system and which Supreme court usually refers to in constitutional cases, show appointments of Cabinet Secretary is made by the Queen and Governor-General respectively and not the Prime Minister.

Evidence is pointing in the direction that junior really does not even issue order of appointing his own senior anywhere.

The next mile is unchartered territory. I don't know what is ahead.

Wish me luck.

Sarkari brains!

I got a reply from those sarkari ppl. And boy, did I get them all confused officially? I was loving it.

A simpleton like me got the highest departments of Govt of India confused and shifting responsibilities on each other.

And that too on a question which those sarkari bumheads thought as GK question which even a kid could have answered.

Following is the string of events that happened which brought the Cabinet Secretary department and DoPT(Department of Personnel and Training) shifting responsibilities on each other

1) 18th May - I file an RTI with DoPT asking which chap appoints Cabinet Secretary?

2) 7th June - Similar RTI query is sent to Cabinet Secretary office as well( I got to

roam around Rashtrapati Bhavan. That was a real good bonus on this urban adventure. Usually you can only get to peek through those iron gates at the west end of the Rajpath.)

3) 9th June - DoPT decides to send my letter to Cabinet Secretary office as they can't

figure out for themselves the GK question which any kid should have answered.

4) 17th June - Cabinet Secretary department sends that letter back to DoPT saying they really don't know who appoints their boss and they tell DoPT that DoPT has to really answer this GK question which any kid should have answered. They send even my letter of 9th June to DoPT as well.

Sarkari bumheads playing football with my RTI application with time running out to score a goal.

:))

On another RTI query regarding election commission, its leading to some other little adventure. Delhi is best place to do all this stuff. I am figuring out that few sarkari fellows of Delhi are little bit more helpful than anywhere. Some of them led me right up to the cabinet of files where original election records are kept. And they love to yakkity-yak in their bureaucratic free time. Some cards have been exchanged but I am secretly hoping that they don't call up my office. :)

Hope to see Wajahat Habibullah, the man who makes these fellows answer, soon.

The ball is rolling now..

I had all these discussions on things not working and what not and then they got lost in nothingness. That’s no way. Action must follow reasoning. Reasoning’s useless otherwise.

The broad question of system not working had to be boiled down to simple queries that can be answered in writing and in black and white. The analysis can get too vague and therefore what is subjective had to be ruled out immediately.

This approach led to 3 specific questions at the end of a long and deep research and shared in some form in the video added to this site.

The first being, “How can the court itself violate the constitution?”. This question is still too vague. But I am not boiling it down further to a specific question simply because the court has already answered in few judgments that in “interest of justice” it has the power to overlook the provisions of the constitution. So there’s a full stop here on this first question for now.

I have always known that roads to disasters are paved with good intentions. In our case, roads to disaster of India could be paved by good intentions of the courts.

The second question being, “How can the election commission of India toss a coin as a judge to resolve dispute between two small or new parties?” This question also needs simplifying. I know for a lot of people this question is simple enough to be understood by even the dumbest and that the bias against hopeful starts by election commission is clear.

But election commission, who is answerable to no one, can easily brush it off that they are judges only for big parties while being only administrators for those hopeful starts. I might need a little help here in making the question 2 simpler therefore.

The third question being, “Who is the competent authority to appoint the Cabinet Secretary?” This question is the summation and culmination where all this analysis converges. I could give up following up on question number 1 and question number 2 just for the sake of this question. This is most specific I can get and hits right at the heart of the reason of all the nonsense happening in this country. Its cold logic meeting the practically invincible jugaad and chalta hai mentality of India.

When I’ll fight on the side of this question the politician or their mandarins will come up with all the jugaad to avoid giving a specific answer. When, and its not if, I do escalate it to the relevant persons or the court maybe, they will give me the chalta hai, ismein dikkat kya hai dialogue.

I have already acted anyway.

An RTI was filed at Cabinet Secretary office asking this 3^rd question specifically on 7^th June. I had also filed a similar RTI with Department of Personnel and Training(DoPT), earlier on 18^th May as well.

Those sarkari people over there while accepting the RTI said that why are you filing an application for asking a GK question because everyone knows that Prime Minister appoints the Cabinet Secretary. I had to tell the bumheads that no minister, including the Prime Minister has the power to appoint any sarkari officer. So they then asked each other, who does it? I said I know but I would want your department to tell me who is it.

These questions may look innocuous but have the greatest potential. Even the officials in the highest government office are a little lost about it.

Watch this space.