Deccan Herald: Ahmedabad: Sunday, July 26, 2015.
Over the last
decade, the use of the RTI Act has expanded democratic space and empowered
people in their struggle to secure basic rights and entitlements and combat
corruption and arbitrary use of power. According to estimates, four to six
million information applications are filed every year, making the Indian RTI
Act, the most extensively used transparency legislation globally. The law is
primarily used by the poor and marginalised, who are most dependent on
government services for their survival.
Under the RTI
Act, independent Information Commissions (ICs) have been set up at the Centre
and in all the states to adjudicate appeals and complaints of citizens who have
been denied access to information under the law. Commissions have extensive
powers, including the power to order disclosure of information, penalising
officials for delaying or denying information and compensating the appellant
for any loss suffered.
As the RTI
law turns 10, perhaps the greatest challenge facing it is the lackadaisical
performance of ICs across the country. The functioning of the ICs is fraught
with problems. A national assessment of the RTI Act, undertaken by RTI
Assessment and Advocacy Group (RaaG) in 2014,found that in several ICs, the
backlog of appeals and complaints has reached alarming levels - an
appeal/complaint filed in the Madhya Pradesh IC would come up for hearing in 60
years! In West Bengal, it would take about 18 years to dispose an
appeal/complaint.
Inordinate
delays in accessing information effectively deny people their fundamental right
to information and render the law meaningless, especially for those living at
the margins. Information about availability of essential drugs at a government
hospital or the status of old age pension payments would be useless unless
provided in a timely manner.
One of the
reasons for these staggering backlogs is that in the absence of timely
appointments, the posts of Information Commissioners are allowed to remain
vacant for long periods of time. In many states like Manipur, Assam, Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh and Goa, there have been long stints, up to two years, when ICs
have been completely non-functional, as the respective state governments failed
to appoint even a single information commissioner.
Despite
mounting pendencies, most ICs are not functioning at the full strength of 11
commissioners. The Central IC, which has a backlog of more than 40,000 cases,
was functioning without a chief for over nine months, till finally after huge
public pressure and on the court’s direction, the Central government made the
appointment. Even now, the CIC is functioning with eight commissioners - three
posts have been vacant for over a year.
High
pendency:
Another cause
for the high levels of pendency is that most ICs have not put in place any
norms on the number of cases each commissioner is expected to dispose of in a
month. As a result, even well staffed ICs have tardy disposal rates. The
national assessment found that the ICs of West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Assam
had a monthly disposal rate of 43, 40 and 21 cases respectively, despite
pendency running into thousands.
The RTI Act
provides for mandatory imposition of a penalty of up to Rs 25,000 on public
information officers violating the provisions of the law. In the period 2011 to
2013, ICs across the country imposed penalties in less than 4 per cent of the
cases where they were imposable. Non-imposition of penalties sends a signal
that violating the law will not invite any consequences and therefore, promotes
a culture of impunity.
The great
reluctance on the part of ICs to impose penalties could be traced to the fact
that most commissioners- 87 per cent of
Chief Information Commissioners and more than 60 per cent of ICs - are former
civil servants and bureaucrats who, perhaps, hesitate to penalise erstwhile
colleagues. The previous chief information commissioner was a former director
of the Intelligence Bureau an organisation which is outside the purview of
the RTI Act and functions in an environment of utmost secrecy.
Orders of the
ICs related to information provision, penalty imposition and awarding compensation
are routinely violated by public authorities. The impunity with which orders
are flouted is best understood through the case of the six national political
parties who were held to be public authorities under the RTI Act by the CIC and
were directed to appoint public information officers in 2013. Till date, none
of the parties has appointed an information officer nor started responding to
RTI requests. One of the reasons for non-compliance with IC orders is that
after hearing and giving directions, the Commission closes the case without
monitoring compliance.
To ensure
robustness of the transparency regime in the country, the functioning of the
adjudicators under the RTI Act must improve.
While the
government needs to make timely and appropriate appointments and provide
adequate budgetary provisions for ICs, the commissions themselves need to look
within and set their house in order.
(The
writers are RTI activists and members of the National Campaign for Peoples’
Right to Information, New Delhi)