The Pakistan Information Commission (PIC) has ordered the upper house of parliament to provide information about senators, including its chairman and other officials, regarding their foreign visits over the previous five years. However, the upper house of parliament is reluctant to comply with the order.
The Senate staff has requested a week to comply with the PIC’s March 31 order in response to the show-cause notice for launching contempt proceedings on the grounds of noncompliance.
On October 29, 2021, Syed Raza Ali Shah, the appellant, filed an appeal with the commission, claiming that he had requested information from the Senate secretary on October 15, 2021, in accordance with the Right to Access to Information Act of 2017, but had not gotten a response.
The material requested by the appellant is a list of senators, including the chairman of the upper house and other officials, who traveled abroad at taxpayer expense between August 2018 and the present.
The right to access information in all matters of public importance was described as a fundamental right provided and recognized by the Constitution and further clarified by the Right of Access to Information Act, 2017, according to a written response provided to the commission by a senator secretariat representative during the hearing.
It continued, “However, given both rights emanated from the same Act, a delicate balance was required to be maintained between the right to information and the right to secrecy or right to shield activities where it was in the department’s interest to do so.
However, the PIC rejected the Senate secretariat’s argument and determined that both the letter and the spirit of the 2017 Act justified disclosing the requested information about the senators’ foreign trips, including those of their chairman and other officials, the number of those trips, the total budget allotted for them, and the total amount actually spent on them.
When the Senate secretariat indicated that it would not abide by the directive, the PIC issued a show-cause notice stating that if an appeal was not filed against a judgment of the information commissioner within 30 days, contempt proceedings would be launched.
Later, the Senate secretariat asked for a week to give the applicant access to the information. Fawad Malik and Zahid Abdullah are also PIC members, and Muhammad Azam serves as the organization’s chief information commissioner.
