RTI earns govt. bigger bucks than estimated

The Hindu: Hyderabad: Tuesday, 03 February 2015.

Actual revenue from RTI services continues to be pegged low, year after year.

Estimates of revenue generated through RTI (Right to Information) queries and actual revenue generated by the State government, has revealed great disparity over the years. Each RTI applicant is required to pay a sum for information demanded.

Going by data from the last few years, revenue estimated by the GAD (General Administration Department) of united Andhra Pradesh is several times lesser than the proceeds the government actually mopped up. Even then, the officials did not raise the estimates, choosing instead to stick to targets of the previous year for the subsequent financial year.

In 2010-11, the estimate for revenue raised through RTI applications was Rs.5 lakh, whereas the government ended up earning Rs.89 lakh. In 2011-12, the projected figure was again Rs.5 lakh, but the revenue generated was Rs.26 lakh. In 2012-13, the estimate was slightly increased to Rs.5.25 lakh and consequently the government received Rs.20 lakh that year.

Reacting to the issue, P.V. Ramesh, Principal Secretary (Resources and Expenditure) at the Andhra Pradesh Government’s Finance Department said the target may have been ‘deliberately kept low’ since the State government did not expect to generate much revenue from the applications.

Another finding is that the amount generated is not proportional to the number of applications, which has been increasing steadily.

The number of RTI applications has increased steadily from 65,973 in 2009-10 to 1.45 lakh in 2012-13. However, revenue over these years has either remained stable or decreased instead of rising.

“There can only be two reasons for this,” said RTI activist Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu. “Either there are a lot of Below Poverty Line (BPL) citizens who have made RTI applications, since it is free for them. This is a positive sign. But, the low revenues can also be because the officials are not providing information on time. If the information is not provided within 30 days, then it has to be handed over free of cost. If this is what is happening then it is of serious concern.”