CPIO's failure to respond to RTI requests constitutes a violation of transparency obligations mandated by the RTI Act, warranting directed compliance.

Hon’ble Commissioner _ANANDI RAMALINGAM O R D E R

1. The Appellant filed an RTI application dated 23.02.2024 seeking information on the following points:

“Sirius Transtech Private Limited is a Private Limited Company, incorporated under the Companies Act as a Company limited by Shares. It is classified as Non-govt company and is registered at RoC-Hyderabad. There are 2 promoter(s) of the company viz. Selvaraj Meiyur, Valli Aparna Marepalli. As per record received through EPFO Ahmedabad, aforesaid firm/company holds/holded account with Erst while Andhra Bank, now Union Bank Account number **********1015 at KAMMARAPALLI Branch PAN number being ******706H. Aforesaid firm is under recovery proceeding for default of PF amount of about 300 Employees working under them during 2016-2019. Following information is asked from Union Bank(Erst while Andhra Bank) regarding aforesaid companies and its director.

1) With respect to Letter Dated 13/01/2021 GJ/AHD/RECO /1567395/734, to Andhra Bank, Kammarapalli Branch (Copy Attached) I would request, copy of reply Sent to EPFO Ahmedabad with respect to mentioned letter.

2) KYC document related to account mentioned above.

3) Details of Account held by said firm and or Directors

4) If said account are closed copy of closure request with details along with document regarding closure.”

2. Having not received any response from the CPIO, the Appellant filed a First Appeal dated 14.04.2024. The FAA’s order, if any, is not on record of the Commission.

3. Aggrieved with the non-receipt of FAA’s order, the Appellant approached the Commission with the instant Second Appeal dated 09.06.2024 stating as under:

“This is very much unfortunate that I have to file this application as There was no response from CPIO or FAA even after expiration of time lines mandated by Section 7 of RTI Act 2005 .

Similar Second appeal has been filed against SBI Bank, via file number but in that case ground of appeal is denial of information Still I would like to go with background of this appeal in detail, case which goes back in year 2018-19 and we have been fighting for justice.

I am one of those 300 odd Employee of Firm SIRIUS TRANSTECH PRIVATE LIMITED, who failed to remit PF dues to these 300 odd employees and till date these employee has not be provided this dues. PF Amount to be contributed to respective PF Office, is actually public money and this firm is guilty of siphoning the public money.

Quantum of this fund is around 50 Lakhs without any interest for penalty.

RTI Act 2005 has been tool to which empowers citizen to promote transparency and accountability in working of Government office. This is what preamble of the Act says.

During course of time many RTIs were made specifically EPFO Office Ahmedabad, EPFO Office Hyderabad, Income Tax Offices, related to this specific firm to know the status of action taken and what is needful done to recover this public money.

In one of the such RTI response received from EPFO Ahmedabad, copy of letter was provided which was sent Erst while Andhra Bank Kammarapalli Branch, dated 13 Jan

2021, asking bank to Freeze the account of the defaulter firm.

Based of this letter, and to know, whether bank acted upon the letter or failed to act leading to defaulter withdrawing the amount and cause public loss to money, I filed present RTI Application dated 23 Feb 2024 (Copy Attached). In addition to response to letter, we had asked for KYC document of the Firm and account number mentioned in the said letter, this would help to trace the defaulter as actual defaulter are not traceable.

But I waited for very long, but could not get any response from the CPIO.

After which I filed an appeal via