Four Items on One Desk: RTI, a Sewage Complaint, a Budget Circular and a Phone Call
You are the junior clerk posted at the Ward 7 office of a municipal corporation. On the morning of Monday, 3 June, four things land on your desk at the same time. (i) An RTI application dated 28 May, received in the ward office on 3 June, seeking copies of measurement books and paid bills for drainage work carried out in Shastri Nagar during 2023-24. (ii) A complaint signed by 40 residents of Shastri Nagar stating that sewage has been overflowing beside the primary school for five days and that two children have fallen ill. (iii) A standing committee circular requiring every ward to submit a prioritised list of monsoon works, with written justification, against a ward allocation of Rs 18 lakh, by 10 June. (iv) A telephone call from the local corporator directing that the entire Rs 18 lakh be spent on resurfacing the road in front of a school run by a trust of which he is a trustee. Both ward engineers are on leave until 12 June. The ward carries 22 pending drainage complaints, of which 9 are marked 'chronic'.
1. Rank the four items in the order you would act on them over the next 48 hours, and state the last date by which the RTI application must be disposed of. Justify every ranking decision.
Read the worked answer
RTI deadline. The 30-day clock under the RTI Act runs from the date the application is received by the public authority, not the date on the application. Receipt here is 3 June, so the outer limit is 3 July. The 48-hour rule applies only where life or liberty is concerned; bills and measurement books for 2023-24 do not fall in that class, so it does not apply.
Ranking for the next 48 hours
- Sewage complaint - first, because it is the only item where harm is continuing and rising (five days, school children, illness reported). Verification and a written report to the health department go out today; the absence of engineers does not stop a site note and photographs.
- RTI application - second, not because it is due, but because it needs a search across files held by the very engineers who are on leave. Starting the file search today is what protects the 3 July deadline.
- Budget circular - third. It is due 10 June and cannot be honestly done without cost data, so the action today is to requisition that data, not to draft the list.
- Corporator's direction - last as an instruction, but recorded today. Oral directions get a same-day file note; they are neither executed on the phone nor silently dropped.
Principle: rank by harm continuing x irreversibility of the deadline, not by the seniority of the person asking.
2. How should the corporator's telephonic direction be handled? State what you would record, where you would route it, and what you would not do.
Read the worked answer
Record. A file note the same day: date, time, caller, the exact words used, and the fact that the direction came by telephone rather than in writing. The trust connection and the fact that a school run by that trust stands to benefit must be recorded as declared interest, as stated by the caller himself.
Route. Place the note before the ward officer, who is the competent authority for the works list, and let the standing committee circular's own channel decide. If the corporator wants it treated as a formal direction, ask for it in writing so it can be answered in writing.
Assess on merit. The road may well be a genuine candidate. Test it against the same criteria as everything else: complaint density, chronic drainage cases, school and hospital proximity, per-household cost. If it wins on those numbers, it wins; if it does not, it is ranked where the numbers put it.
What I would not do. I would not commit funds, prepare a work order, or give an assurance on the telephone. Nor would I refuse to record the call. A clerk who says 'yes' on the phone has spent public money without a decision; a clerk who says nothing has left no trace. The file note is what converts a phone call into a decision that someone accountable can take.
3. Which single missing piece of information most affects the Rs 18 lakh prioritisation, and how would you obtain it by 10 June with both engineers on leave?
Read the worked answer
The missing item is a costed estimate per work, paired with severity data. A priority list without a per-work cost is not a prioritisation at all: you can rank a Rs 40,000 desilting of a chronic drain against a Rs 12 lakh road only if both carry a figure. Severity tells you where the harm is; cost tells you how many places Rs 18 lakh can reach. The relevant figure is cost per household relieved, not the size of the work.
How to get it inside the time available
- Pull past estimates, measurement books and the schedule of rates from the ward's own record room - a repeat desilting or repair usually has a 2022-23 or 2023-24 precedent.
- Use the sub-engineer or work assistant still on duty for the technical reading; leave does not empty the office.
- Take the complaint register itself as severity evidence: count complaints per location, note the 9 'chronic' entries and how often each location repeats.
- Ask the health department for its sanitary inspector's note on the school area, which carries independent weight.
Then state the limit in the submission. Say plainly that figures are based on precedents and will be revised after 12 June. A candid caveat is defensible; a confident list built on guesswork is not.