Times
of India: New Delhi: Friday, 03 July 2015.
Curious
Indians are prolific users of the Right to Information (RTI) Act and public
authorities are unable to keep them satisfied. Indian citizens have filed close
to 50 lakh RTIs in a year (2013-2014) but the number of rejections and appeals
indicate that public authorities are often failing to give the information that
people are seeking.
A
country-wide study on the functioning of the Central Information Commission
(CIC) and state information commissions by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative
(CHRI) reveals that the number of RTIs has increased exponentially. While the
number of RTIs in the Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) has increased by 127%, the
number of RTIs in Rajasthan has almost doubled. Gujarat has recorded 41%
increase in the number of RTI applicants while Karnataka witnessed 31% within a
year.
The study
"State of Information Commissions and the Use of RTI laws in India"
by CHRI's Venkatesh Nayak found that public authorities under the central
government received the most number of RTI applications in 2013-14 at 8.34 lakh
(with 73% public authorities revealing the number of applicants). Maharashtra
came in second with 7.03 lakh RTI applications. In fact, between the central
government and Maharashtra, the two received 62% of RTI applications among the
12 commissions that submitted their details.
If the
increase in the number of RTIs is a heartening sign, the rejections of
applications are not. CIC reported that 60,127 RTI applications were rejected
by public information officers in 2013-14, the number of first appeals filed
with various First Appellate Authorities (FAAs) was 57% higher at 94,945.
"However the number of first appeals is disproportionately large and
indicates lack of satisfaction amongst the RTI applicants with the information
or reply provided by the PIOs," the report says.
The highest
proportion of first appeals was reported in Karnataka at 1,786%. While the
state information commission reported that 1,517 RTI applications were rejected
the number of first appeals filed was 28,614. "This indicates the
extremely high level of dissatisfaction with the decisions of the PIOs,"
the report said.
Nagaland
clocked a 1,325% increase in the number of first appeals (228) filed as against
the number of rejections (16) at the application stage. Maharashtra comes third
in terms of first appeals outnumbering rejections (in 2014). While 15,848
rejections were recorded for this period, the proportion of first appeals filed
was 490% of the rejections (77,678). Of this only 7,139 appeals were rejected
by FAAs and information is said to have been provided in the remaining cases.