CIC sees 95% drop in cases in last two months

Times of India: New Delhi: Friday, 16 October 2015.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) has registered a 94.61% drop in the number of cases in the last two months with an average daily number plummeting from 223 cases in January-July to 12 cases in August-September 2015.

There are eight information commissioners including Chief Information Commission (CIC) Vijai Sharma. Disposal of cases has also come down by 11% from an average of 99 cases a day (between Jan-July) to 88 cases between Aug-Sept according to analysis by CHRI's Venkatesh Nayak.

The number of cases admitted between January to July were 178 and an equal number was disposed off. Between August-September a total of 567 cases were admitted by the commission while 4,066 were disposed off. As of October there are 35,407 cases pending before the commission.

Information commissioner Sharat Sabharwal's office admitted the least number of cases - 52 during the August-September period while CIC Vijai Sharma's office admitted more than double that number - 106 cases. When contacted Sharma said there could be a combination of reasons for the drop in cases. ``This could be because some papers are missing basic information, or are incomplete. Very often applicants don't go to the appellate authority level. There are also court orders that have laid down certain protocols for admitting appeals. I admit there is a point of view for allowing applications to be accepted as before, but that is a point of view,'' he said.

RTI activists said that the transparency watchdog was rejecting appeals and complaints on technical grounds. ``The sharp decline in registration of cases appears to be a deliberate attempt to give false impression to the citizens about reduction in pendency. The commission is also not maintaining data of cases transparently,'' Comm (retired) Lokesh Batra said. He has started an online petition against the CIC's alleged attempt to ``kill the RTI act'' that has already garnered 1,200 signatures including former CIC Wajahat Habibullah and former information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi.

Expressing concern over the situation Gandhi said the move was against the letter and spirit of the act. Gandhi said that he had been informed the CIC was asking for a photo identity card before admitting a case.

Sharma has the highest pendency of cases at 12,389 followed by information commissioner Basant Seth's office that has a pendency of 4,053 cases. ``This volume is attributable to the fact that the Chief Information Commissioner's post lay vacant for eight months with no reallocation of work amongst the information commissioners,'' Nayak observed.

Incidentally, the commission had been under tremendous pressure to bring down pendency. With no chief for a year the number of pending cases had climbed to 39,000.