Times of India: Kochi: Thursday,
October 13, 2016.
Though the
country celebrates the 11th anniversary of the inception of the Right to
Information (RTI) Act, India is ranked 66 out of the 102 countries surveyed by
the World Justice Project for the efficiency in the Act's enactment.
In the state,
presently all five posts of information commissioners, which are to be
mandatorily filled, are vacant. Only a single chief information commissioner
mans the entire team, instead of a six-member board.
"Over
13,200 cases are pending state-wide due to the acute understaffed status quo of
the information commission. Of the cases that are forwarded to the chief
information commissioner, 1000 files are pending," said Vinson M Paul,
state chief information commissioner.
Paul said
that a court case was filed by the National Campaign for People's Right to
Information (NCPRI) so as to look into unfilled vacancies.
"The
high court had issued an order in November 2015, to complete the process of
appointments to the vacant posts within six weeks of the date of production of
a copy of the judgement. However, it's almost a year since the judgement and
not even a single vacancy has been filled yet. We are to file a contempt of
court case against the chief secretary of the secretariat," said M T
Thomas, member of NCPRI state committee.
A list of
five prospective appointees was refused by the governor. Accordingly, the court
ordered the state government to appoint those who were shortlisted by the
selection committee as information commissioners, while UDF was in power.
However, no action has been taken.
Shailesh
Gandhi, former central information commissioner said that 54% of the RTIs filed
are queries for information that are to be published suo motu by respective
government organizations, which points to the callous lookout to the RTI by
those in charge of the implementation.
"The
appointing of information commissioners are to be done with people who have a
predilection for transparency. However, the trend shows that the appointments
are made on the basis of political dispositions because RTI challenges the
power of the powerful," Gandhi said.
Abey George,
state convener of NCPRI said that 60 % of responses to the RTIs filed by the
public are given in one word or one sentence replies by the public information
officers by zeroing in on the flaws in framing the question.
"The
PIOs are supposed to help even an illiterate person to file intelligible
questions. However, they are so bent on finding loopholes to the answers that
only a few bright minds can avail information by framing questions that rules
out any loop holes," George said.
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