How delays are weakening RTI

Economic Times: New Delhi: Saturday, 14 March 2015.

A former commandant of the Central Industrial Security Force, who lost 11 men in a 2009 Maoist attack on a Nalco mine in Odisha, has been seeking information on errant officers responsible for faulty security infrastructure for more than a year. Yet, he is better off than scores of other applicants.

As cases pile up at CIC, the final appellate authority for Right to Information (RTI) Act, applicants are being forced to wait up to four years before their cases are taken up on issues ranging from unauthorised construction to action against fraudulent doctors to appointments and promotions in government departments.

Shakti Dhar Dobhal, an ex-commandant of CISF, had written several letters to National Aluminium Company and ministry of mines after the Maoist attack at Damanjodi in Odisha, pointing out faults in the firm's security infrastructure.

The ministry had asked Nalco to take action in 2009. However, Dobhal was unable to get any information on whether the company had actually taken action against the officers. He approached CIC in 2013 but had to wait for about 15 months before his complaint was heard last week. Dobhal's case was nonetheless disposed of much faster than that of Bengaluru-based BV Muralikrishnan, whose appeal was heard after four years last week.

Muralikrishnan had sought information from the National Research Development Corporation in July 2010. After going through the set procedure of applying to the first appellate authority, he approached CIC on February 2, 2011, little realising that his appeal would not be heard until February 2015.

Former chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah blamed the inordinate delays on the government's reluctance to adhere to Section 4 of RTI that encourages voluntary disclosure of routine governance matters.

"There are many cases that are pending since my time, 2010. The problem is compliance with disclosure of information which should be done on the websites of government departments. While most departments, ministries and state governments have websites, they are not regularly updated. This leaves only one resort for the people - apply for information under RTI. This increases the number of applications in ministries and appeals in CIC," said Habibullah.

That explains why a Guwahati resident has been seeking information for the past 18 months on something as mundane as the policy on reimbursement of Ayurvedic medical bills that should be in the public domain as a matter of routine.

CIC is saddled with so many applications that it is facing a peculiar problem - how to punish errant public information officers or PIOs. In many cases, by the time the case is heard, the PIO gets changed, leaving CIC with little option but to ask the incumbent PIO to trace the officer responsible for the delay in supplying information.

For instance, a Delhi resident who had sought information on unauthorised construction on a property had to wait 20 months before he was heard at CIC last month. CIC found that the PIO had changed and served a show cause notice to the then PIO for wrongfully denying information.

A doctor, who has been seeking information on fraud cases by a teacher in Medical Council of India, was heard after a year and faced a similar problem. CIC realised that the PIO had changed and asked the new PIO to serve a show cause notice for personal appearance to the previous officer. Venkatesh Nayak of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative linked the delays to the shortage of information commissioners at CIC. The government is yet to fill four vacancies, including that of the chief information commissioner, he said.

"It is of grave concern for the RTI fraternity in India that the vacancies have still not been filled even though the advertisement by the government is more than a year old. This is contrary to the promise of transparent governance made by the NDA government," Nayak said, adding, "ironically, the quest for transparency, which is mentioned on the PM's website, continues to remain a quest even after 10 months of the NDA being in power."

Nayak his own cases where he had sought information from the headquarters, integrated defence staff under defence ministry, which has been pending before the commission since May 3, 2011. "I have sent two reminders but there has been no movement. In fact, there has been no acknowledgement of the reminders either," he said.

India is unique in these kind of delays and pendency at CIC. The experience in other countries like the UK, Slovenia, Bangladesh and the European Union are very different. Internationally, no information commission has such high rates of pendency. Data provided on UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website reveals that in most years at least 90% of the casework is finished. ICO has classified its work areas under different heads viz. data protection, privacy and electronic communications and freedom of information. Under freedom of information head, there is no pendency reported in the year 2013-14. In this year, ICO even finished the previous year's casework.

A similar encouraging pattern is reported by European Commission. An October 2014 report reveals that the number of access applications have been steadily increasing at European Parliament, Council and Commission and at least 90% of the applications are disposed of. In 2012, 6,014 applications were received and 5,274 were replied to and in 2013, replies were given in 5,906 cases on 6,525 applications.