COUNTERVIEW: Ahmedabad: Monday, April 30, 2018.
"Model"
Gujarat's State Information Commissions (SIC), the official Right to
Information (RTI) watchdog, appears to be competing with India's Central
Information Commission (CIC) for "returning" appeals and complaints
filed under the powerful transparency law, RTI Act, claimed to be the
brainchild of ex-Congress presiding Sonia Gandhi.
Following CIC
"returning" 27,558 appeals/complaints out of 47,756 registered during
January 2016 to October 2017, Gujarat's SIC comes next. It "returned"
9,854 cases as against 15,071 cases registered. The SICs of other states which
have been "returning" high number of appeals filed under SIC are
Assam and Uttarakhand.
Revealing
this, a just-released report has said that the trend of a large number of
appeals/complaints being returned began in 2015, when there was a sudden surge
in the number of cases being returned.
"Several
RTI activists wrote to the then Chief Information Commissioner of the CIC
urging that the commission proactively and publicly disclose information on the
number of appeals/complaints being returned and also the reason for the
return," it adds.
While
subsequently deficiency memos, which record the reason for returning an
appeal/complaint began being made public on-line, subsequently "these
memos, have again been made inaccessible to the public and can be accessed only
if the appeal/complaint number is known."
A major
reason of the alleged indifference towards RTI appeals/complaints, the report
suggests, is refusal to fill up vacant posts in SICs and CIC, with majority of
commissioners being former government servants.
Giving the
example of indifference at the highest level towards filling up vacant posts,
the report says, "The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information
(NCPRI) wrote to the Prime Minister on June 5, 2017 regarding two posts of information
commissioners lying vacant in the CIC. However, no response or acknowledgment
was received."
It adds,
"In response to an application under the RTI Act seeking information on
the action taken on the representation made to the PM, the reply received
stated that the representation was treated as a public grievance and registered
on the online public grievance portal of the central government."
However,
"Upon tracking the grievance, it was found that the online status was
'Case closed', even though the field ‘Details’ stated that 'The matter is under
consideration'."
Details of
information was sought under the RTI Act from 29 ICs about the background of
all commissioners, including the chief information commissioners, appointed
since the inception of the RTI Act, shows, according the report, that the
commissioners are being appointed in violation of the RTI law which wants they
should be "from diverse backgrounds and fields".
Thus, of the
303 commissioners for whom background information was available, 59% were
retired government officials, while 14% had a legal or judicial background (11%
were advocates or from the judicial service and 3% were retired judges); 8%
commissioners had a background in journalism, 6% were educationists and just 3%
were social activists or workers.
Then, of the
the 107 chief information commissioners for whom data was obtained, the
overwhelming majority (84%) were retired government servants,including 67% retired
Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers and another 17% from other
services. Of the remainder, 10% had a background in law (5% former judges and
5% lawyers or judicial officers).
The result of
this, contends the report, is, the number of appeals and complaints pending on
December 31, 2016 in the 23 information commissions, from which data was
obtained, stood at an alarming figure of 1,81,852, and the pendency increased
to about two lakh cases (1,99,186) at the end of October 2017.
As of October
31, 2017, the maximum number of appeals/complaints were pending in Uttar
Pradesh (41,561) followed by Maharashtra (41,178) and Karnataka (32,992). The
CIC with 23,944 pending appeals and complaints came in at number four, the
report adds.
.JPG)
.JPG)
