PMO to reply to RTI query on bringing back black money

NEW DELHI: Kanhaiya Lal, a Rajasthan villager who wanted to know what happened to PM Narendra Modi’s promise to credit `15 lakh into the bank accounts of the poor, will get a response from the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Central Information Commission has told the PMO to respond to Lal’s RTI application filed earlier this year.

A resident of Jhalawar district, Lal had complained to the commission that the PMO hadn’t responded to his application.

Lal also wanted to know the status of the PM’s pledge to remove corruption — a promise made in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Lal said corruption had increased in the last two years.

At a hearing on Tuesday, the PMO told the commission that it hasn’t received Lal’s request earlier and thus, couldn’t respond. Now that it had received a copy, the commission said it would respond.

But Lal may not get the answers he is looking for. The transparency law only requires the PMO to give the available information to an applicant, not create information.

If the PMO has not discussed the promise to bring back black money and distribute it among the poor, then it can simply tell the applicant that the information was not available in its records. Or it could transfer the application to the finance ministry.