Govt quietly kills timeline for replies to public queries

NEW DELHI: Changes in the central secretariat manual of office procedure (CSMOP) — the holy grail for communication between the central government and the legislature as well as the public — have got activists up in arms. The manual, which earlier set out a timeline for communication between the Centre and the public, has, in its latest edition, gone silent on communication with the public. Instead, it is now ‘VIPs’ who will be entitled to a communication timeline.
What makes the change important, said activists, is that enquiries, grouses or plain communication for an arm of the central government were so far bound by para 66(1) of the manual to receive a timely reply.“In previous years, we would refer to the manual of office procedure and ask whether a reply had been sent under para 66 (1) of the manual. However, this time, when we checked the latest edition (14th edition), we found that ‘member of public’ has been replaced by ‘VIP’,” said Anjali Bhardwaj, an information activist.
In the thirteenth edition, which came out in 2010, para 66(1) said, “Each communication received from a Member of Parliament, member of the public, recognised association or a public body will be acknowledged within 15 days, followed by a reply within the next 15 days of acknowledgement sent.”
In the new edition, though, this has changed — para 37 (vi) states: “Each communication received from a Member of Parliament/VIP, shall be acknowledged within 15 days, followed by a reply within the next 15 days of acknowledgement sent.”
This change was introduced after the new CSMOP was drawn up, doing away with the “voluminous” previous edition, as former secretary of the department of administrative reforms and public grievances, Alok Rawat, says in the foreword to the manual. Interestingly, this CSMOP was issued in 2015, and put online last year.
Officials played down the impact of the change, saying the effort was to streamline the CSMOP. Said an official, “The latest edition is a more productive manual, which has done away with a number of entries that are otherwise available online.”
According to the official, the rules of specific acts remain the same. “For instance, the RTI Act still has a deadline for response from the public authority, which is not impacted by the changes in the manual,” said the official. Bhardwaj, however, claims the change has a deeper impact. “Earlier, the rule meant that a citizen had a right to a timely response from the government. Now, the public is no longer deemed to be eligible for a time-bound response,” Bhardwaj argued.