DNA: New Delhi: Saturday, March
18, 2017.
While there
has been a jump of 22.67 per cent over the previous year in the filing of RTI
applications in 2015-16, there has also been a steep increase in the number of
applications rejected by various ministries, which have used the mysterious
pretext of citing 'others' as the reason.
Under the
provisions of the RTI Act, a public authority can reject an application and
refuse to provide information citing security and privacy reasons governed by
the sections 8, 9, 11 and 24 of the Act. But most of the ministries who
rejected the application cited none of these permissible clauses. Against
28,444 applications rejected under the 'others' category the previous year, in
2015-16, the number has increased to 36,913.
A whooping 43
per cent of the rejections were recorded under the 'others' category, while 47
per cent were rejected under the permissible clauses. Out of 11,138 received by
the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in 2015-16, it rejected 2,227 applications
citing 'others' as the reason. The CIC has reported that there has been a
decrease in the number of first appeals received, but an increase in the number
disposed by the first appellate authorities.
Venkatesh
Nayak, Programme Coordinator, Access to Information Programme at the
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), described the increase in
applications to be a positive trend, but also raised concern at the increasing
number of rejections without valid reasons mentioned under the RTI Act being
cited. The CIC disposed of 28,188 appeal and complaint cases in 2015-16, while
25,960 cases were registered during the same period.
While the
President's Secretariat received only 123 more RTIs in 2015-16 as compared to
the previous year, the proportion of rejection plummeted from 9.30 per cent to
1.2 per cent in 2015-16. In 2015-16, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) reported
a rejection rate of 20.1 per cent of the RTIs received. While this a
significant drop from 22.10 per cent in 2014-15, only seven RTI applications
were rejected by the PMO invoking section 8. A whopping 2,227 RTIs were
rejected under the 'others' category.
The
proportion of rejection of RTIs by the Supreme Court fell to 21.1 per cent in
2015-16, while it received only six more RTIs as compared to the previous year.
The proportion of rejections by the Delhi High Court also registered a fall of
more than 1 per cent in 2015-16, even tough the number of RTIs received went up
by 127.
While the
number of RTIs received by the Comptroller and Auditor General fell to 716 in
2015-16 from 796 the previous year, the proportion of rejections zoomed to 17.2
per cent from 6.3 per cent reported the previous year. This alarming increase
requires an in-depth study.
The Cabinet
Secretariat also witnessed a jump in the proportion of rejections from 4.3 per
cent to 6.65 per cent in 2015-16, although it received only 73 more RTIs. The
Ministry of Personnel and Training reported a significant decline in the
proportion of rejections at 3.4 per cent in 2015-16 as compared to 9.4 per cent
during the previous year, even though it reported receiving 9,000 more RTIs in
2015-16. This appears to be a positive trend.
Among key
ministries, the proportion of rejections in the Ministry of Defence fell
significantly to 11.5 per cent in 2015-16 as compared to 15.90 per cent the
previous year. In the Ministry of Finance, the proportion of rejections fell to
18.3 per cent in 2015-16 as compared to the 20.2-per cent rejection rate the
previous year.
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