State govts liable for officials’ info: DoPT
The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has said that the onus of giving the right information about a person to be recruited at a high-level was on the state departments. The DoPT said this while replying to an RTI plea filed on the basis of news reports, which said that rules were bent to accommodate Mr P.J. Thomas as the CVC.
The DoPT in the RTI reply had further added that the executive record (ER) sheet maintained by it is prepared on the basis of the information provided by the state government. The RTI was filed by the activist, Subhash Chandra Agarwal.
The RTI reply was made public on Thursday when the Supreme court officially invalidated Mr Thomas’s appointment as the CVC. Mr Thomas on Thursday also resigned from his post.
Talking to the media, Mr Agarwal stated: “I had asked for the information on whether Thomas was named as an accused in an FIR filed by the Kerala government in connection with alleged financial irregularities in the case of Palmolein Oil Imports in 1992. The DoPT has replied in the affirmative to my query.”
Mr Agarwal further added, “I had also sought information from the DoPT on whether Thomas’s record as accused was omitted from his biodata which was placed before the selection committee responsible for his selection as the CVC. The DoPT has replied to me that Mr Thomas’s :bio-data as reflected in the executive recordsheet was generated on the basis of inputs provided by the state government.”
The DoPT had further stated in the reply, which is with this newspaper possession, that the “responsibility of the correctness of information available on the ER sheet lies with the state government where the officer is posted and the individual officer concerned.”
However, the DoPT officials have confirmed that the ER sheet, which was placed before the CVC selection committee did not mention the Palmolein case against Mr Thomas.
The DoPT also maintained that they had earlier written to the state governments to make sure that the information given on the ER sheets is correct. “A copy of the letter dispatched to the Kerala Government has been shared with the RTI reply by the DoPT,” said Mr Agarwal. The DoPT officials maintained that two weeks after the CVC recommended closure of the case against Thomas in 25 June, 2007 of the case against Mr Thomas, the DoPT noted that the government should “await the action” taken in the Palmolein case by the Kerala government as well as the concerned court where the case was in progress.
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