New Delhi:
A former Indian Air Force officer, who claims to be a whistleblower in the force, has literally carpet bombed the Central Information Commission with over 3,500 RTI petitions and counting.
As a result of this, the Commission had to group his pleas under various common points before giving a verdict on each issue even as it underlined that there was a need to consider the feasibility of having some legal filter based on objective criteria to sift those applications that may appear to be needlessly repetitive.
The Commission also said that this order be placed before the Chief Information Commissioner to device a mechanism to handle applications appearing to be 'vexatious' even as it highlighted that RTI Act has not defined the term.
To handle this load of applications from a single person, the Commission had to devote one person in the registry for only opening the envelops of appeals from Sanjeev Sharma, the former IAF officer who himself claims to have filed over 6,000 RTI applications with the IAF, CIC sources said.
"The appellant is a retired officer of the Indian Air Force... On July 15, 2015 when the hearing commenced, the number of appeals filed by the appellant as registered with the registry of this Commission, was 3,588," Chief Information Commissioner Vijai Sharma noted.
He noted that the appellant indicated during the hearings that he was still filing RTI applications and will continue to file them.
"The appellant was steadfast in underlining that much wrong has been done to him by the respondents and they should pay attention and do justice to him," Mr Sharma noted.