COUNTERVIEW: New Delhi: Friday,
October 07, 2016.
As India's
Right to Information Act (RTI Act) will enter the 12th year of implementation
on October 12, a new study by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)
has said that “not all Information Commissions come out with their Annual
Reports in a timely manner.”
“A major
reason for the delays in the preparation of the annual reports is lack of
inputs from the public authorities through their parent ministries and
departments”, a CHRI report, prepared by senior RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak,
says.
“Although the
Information Commissions are known to press upon the respective Governments to
fulfill their reporting obligations, compliance is poor”, it adds.
This year,
like before, CHRI says, “There are only a handful of annual reports published
for the latest year due. As a result, it is difficult to answer the most basic
question - how many RTI applications are received from citizens all over the
country in a given year.”
Based on the
data collected by CHRI about RTI applications from all the annual reports of
the Information Commissions available on their websites, the report says, “A
total of 1.75 crore (1,75,23,154) RTI applications are reported to have been
made to the Central and State Governments during the period 2005-2015.”
Giving a
break up, it says, the Central Government received more than a quarter (27.20%
i.e., 47.66 lakh) of the 1.75 crore requests submitted by citizens in 2005-15,
followed by the Maharasthra government, which received 26.40% i.e., 46.26 lakh,
the Karnataka government 11.83%, Tamil Nadu 4.89%, and Gujarat, long propagated
as India's model state, 4.32%, less than the proportion of its population,
which is about 5%.
“Counting the
RTI statistics published by 15 Information Commissions during the period
2013-15 (taking into account statistics available only for the latest year) a
total of 26.60 lakh RTI requests were made by citizens during a period of one
year”, the report says.
Based on
this, the report adds, “It may be estimated said that the total number of RTI
requests submitted across the country in a year during this period could be
about 53-56 lakhs.” Other RTI activists peg the figure at 75-80 lakh RTI
applications per year.
The report
regrets, “None of the Information Commissions that follow the financial year
reporting cycle, have published their Annual Reports for the year 2015-16”,
adding, “Amongst the Information Commissions that follow the calendar year
reporting cycle, only Meghalaya and Sikkim have published their Annual Reports
for the year 2015.”
It further says,
“The Karnataka Information Commission is the only body that has published
online, all annual reports due, since October 2005”, insisting, “There is an
urgent need to ensure the publication of annual reports in the larger States of
Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.”
The report
underlines, “Without data from these States which have a large number of RTI
users and activists, it is not possible to draw a more accurate statistical
picture of the volume of RTI applications filed across the country.”
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