The Statesman: New Delhi: Saturday,
March 18, 2017.
While the
Government of India received a record number of 9.76 lakh RTIs, four out of
every 10 RTIs rejected were on grounds not permitted under the RTI Act,
according to the Central Information Commission's 2015-16 annual report.
A quick
analysis of the report carried out by Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human
Rights Initiative (CHRI) found that during 2015-2016, 9.76 lakh RTI
applications were said to have been received by registered public authorities
which is 2.21 lakh or 22.67% more than that received in 2014-15.
The analysis
carried out by CHRI found that the public authorities rejected 6.62 per cent of
the RTI applications processed during 2015-2016. This seems to have come down
by 1.77% from the high of 8.39 reported in 2014-15.
The analysis
found that the highest proportion of RTI applications was not rejected under
permissible exemptions but in the mysterious category of “others”. Of 43%
rejections recorded under this category, more than 4 out of every 10 RTI
applications rejected were for reasons other than those permitted by the RTI
Act.
The Prime
Minister’s Office is one of the public authorities that employed this device
frequently.
Forty seven
per cent of the 9.76 RTIs were rejected under various clauses in Section 8 of
the RTI ACT. One per cent was rejected under Section 9 and 7% were rejected by
the 26 security and intelligence organisations partially excluded under Section
24 of the RTI Act.
The analysis
of the CIC report by CHRI also said the Ministry of Drinking Water and
Sanitation and Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs have not reported their RTI
statistics despite registering with the CIC. On the other hand, only 33 % of
the public authorities from the Ministry Of Road Transport and Highways
reported their RTI statistics to the CIC.