Times of
India: Pune: Sunday, June 23, 2019.
Access
to information, under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, is not easy in the
state as despite a sanctioned strength of eight state information commissioners
(SICs), Maharashtra, right now, has just five including the state chief
information commissioner, Sumit Mullick.
The
state information commission has 41,140 appeals and complaints pending. And the
situation is exacerbated by the fact that the government is yet to appoint the
three remaining SICs.
In
addition to Mullick, Maharashtra is supposed to have seven other SICs for
Konkan, Greater Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Aurangabad, Nagpur and Amravati.
However,
the benches for Konkan, Pune and Nagpur have been lying vacant and the existing
SICs have been given additional charge.
“The
number of pending appeals will keep rising unless there is a way to address
this pendency,” said former central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi.
He has sent several letters to the government to address this situation.
Mullick,
who is following up on the appointments, told TOI on Wednesday that a committee
will select the candidates for the three vacant posts. “We know there has been
a delay, but we should be able to speed up the work soon.
The
commissioners would be appointed and the cases would be cleared,” he assured.
RTI
activists, meanwhile, said cases pending for months and years is in contradiction
to the very Act. “People come to seek information here. There is no point in
making them wait for so long,” said an RTI activist.
People
usually apply to the SICs when their efforts to gain information from
government offices, using RTI applications, fail.
If
the average rate of disposal is about 500-700 cases, the mounting pendency
means it would take over a year to resolve the existing cases and the fresh
appeals.
However,
Mullick said all the cases that are similar are being clubbed together and the
verdict is given commonly. This is being done by all the five commissioners.
The
other mandate of sharing the Right To Information (RTI) appeals and replies on
the respective government websites too has not been complied with, he added.
With
the assembly elections scheduled in October, the government would have to speed
up the SIC appointments as the model code of conduct will come into force from
September.
It
will have to ensure that all the RTI application and RTI replies are put up on
the websites.
“It
should be in an easy search format that enables individuals to understand the
query and the reply,” said Gandhi.
Mullick
plans a to hold revenue division-wise meeting with revenue officials and direct
them to put up the applications and replies online or face punitive action
under the Act.
In
February this year, the state government was planning to appoint a three-member
search committee to recommend people for the posts of state CIC and information
commissioners, who needed not be necessarily bureaucrats, to help clear over
35,000 RTI pending appeals then.
A
government resolution in this regard was issued on February 22, days after the
Supreme Court (SC) directed that the appointments of state chief information
commissioner and information commissioners would no longer be restricted to
bureaucrats.
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