Live Law: Bangalore: Monday, May 22, 2017.
A study
conducted by the Legal System Reforms Project, Azim Premji University,
Bangalore has revealed that most High Courts notify RTI rules which frustrate
the purpose of the RTI Act. The report titled, “The Implementation of the Right
to Information Act, 2005 in Nine High Courts of India – A Comparative Study”,
compares the implementation of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI) across
nine High Courts in India.
Lamenting the
current state of judicial compliance with the RTI Act, the report states, “Ten
years after the RTI Act came into force, its initial objectives of
accountability and transparency of public institutions continues to elude us.
The Indian judiciary, while maintaining a rhetoric on government
accountability, continues to be opaque and non-compliant with the RTI Act
(sic).”
The study
compares the High Courts through development of a numerical scale called the
Court Transparency Index (CTI) to measure each High court’s compliance with the
Act. Upon research, it has found that High Courts “perform poorly in terms of implementing
the RTI Act”.
Further,
through a practice-based comparative analysis of High Courts, the project also
highlights the methods through which the Court subverts requests for
information. This includes rejecting applications on procedural grounds such as
such as excess fees paid, application not signed and incorrect name in the
demand draft. Other reasons for rejections included statements such as, “available
in website”, “information not available in form”, “information kept in a sealed
envelope”.
Here are
the other findings of the study:
1.
In general, High Courts are non-compliant with the Right
to Information Act, 2005.
2.
The compliance with the RTI Act, 2005 increases with RTI
workload.
3.
High Courts reject a high number of RTI applications-
mostly for reasons outside the RTI Act.
4.
Most High Courts do not make suo-motu declarations as per
Section 4 (1) of the RTI Act.
5.
While High Courts are ready to provide information
already at hand, they are reluctant to provide information which needs excess effort
to compile.
6.
High Courts do not provide information which can be
obtained under the rules.
7.
High Courts do not provide information already put up on
the court website.
8.
High Court registries do not provide information about
the Judicial Assets.
9.
High Courts typically take around 3 weeks to reply to a
RTI application.
High Courts
in their judgments generally decide against PIOs of other institutions, and in favour of PIOs of their own Court.