Chennai Corporation rules out divulging property details of councillors

Chennai: An activist in south Chennai, who wanted to know the property details of city corporation councilors, is agitated with the RTI reply of Chennai corporation informing that details will not be divulged as a petition is pending before the court.

“This will set a bad precedent as these details are suppose to be in public domain and citing pending legal cases, the denial of information will only thwart the objective of RTI act,” petitioner Gopalakrishnan said.

“On Wednesday, I received a denial reply from the city corporation public information officer, who is also the assistant returning officer of zone six for my petition seeking the details of properties owned by the local councillors,” he said.

The Madras high court has been seeking transparency on the assets acquired by politicians, but for some reasons the same is not shared in public domains by local bodies and the state election commission.

Further, the corporation which provides the election declaration certificate for the winning candidates should actually verify the data submitted by the aspiring councillors, but such process are not followed, Gopalakrishnan said.

Last week Justice N. Kirubakaran of Madras high court enlarged the scope of a litigation relating to the assets of a councillor, in respect of all the councillors elected from 2006 onwards and referred the matter to the Chief Justice to be heard by a division bench as larger public interest is involved in it.

When contacted informed corporation sources said Madras high court in November 30 had directed the state election commission and city corporation to produce the declaration of assets made by councillors and the same will be submitted to the court and for the above reasons the data is not shared, sources
said.

To this, RTI activist Gopalakrishnan argued that the court had not directed the corporation to deny information related to the properties acquired by councillors.