Business Standard: New
Delhi: Thursday, July 23, 2015.
A
study, conducted by RTI Assessment and Advocacy Group (RAAG) and Samya - Centre
for Equity Studies (CES), titled 'Peoples' Monitoring of the RTI Regime in
India' reported amongst other things that there are huge and growing delays in
the disposal of cases in many of the Information Commissions, with pendency of
cases growing every month. According to this report, the main reasons behind
the delays seem to be the paucity of Commissioners in some of the Commissions
and the low productivity of some of the other Commissioners, mainly due to
inadequate support.
However,
in absence of information regarding objectivity of the surveying organization,
research methodology and survey design and scheme for data collection and its
verification, it is not considered prudent to comment on their findings.
The
Government has, however, taken several steps like capacity building through
training and issue of guidelines for Public Information Officers and First
Appellate Authorities, so as to enable them to supply information/dispose of
first appeal effectively, resulting into less number of appeals to the
Information Commission. The Government apart from a number of clarificatory
orders has also issued an OM No. 1/18/2007-IR dated 21st September, 2007 and
1/6/2011-IR dated 15th April, 2013 impressing upon the public authorities to
disclose maximum information proactively so that citizens need not resort to
filing of RTI applications to access information available with the public
authorities. The Central Information Commission has been granted autonomy in
recruitment of staff. Further, Chief Information Commissioner and an
Information Commissioner have been appointed in the Central Information
Commission in June 2015.
This
was stated by the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and
Pensions Dr. Jitendra Singh in a written reply to a question by Shri Ram
Charitra Nishad in the Lok Sabha today.
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