Ministries laggards in work report

Calcutta Telegraph‎‎‎‎: New Delhi: Thursday, October 13, 2016.

Central ministries and departments have been laggards in complying with the cabinet secretariat's directive to publish monthly performance report.

According to a survey conducted by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, only 7.6 per cent of central ministries and 17.4 per cent of central departments have complied with the directive in the June to September quarter of this fiscal.

The cabinet secretariat had issued the order in June after the Central Information Commission (CIC) suggested that it consider disclosing unclassified portions of the monthly reports submitted by individual ministries and departments.

Since 1987, Rule 10 of the Rules of Procedure in Regard to Proceedings of the Cabinet has mandated that all ministers submit monthly reports to the cabinet.

According to this rule, every month a summary of the work of every department and ministry should be circulated among the ministers. If there is any classified material, there is a provision to mark them as such.

The CHRI's Venkatesh Nayak had petitioned the Central Information Commission last year that portions of these monthly reports which are either "unclassified" or not exempted under Section 8 of the RTI Act should be made public.

Section 8 of the RTI Act lists the instances under which a public authority can withhold information. These include matters of security and strategic importance, issues that could lead to a breach of privilege of Parliament, trade secrets or intellectual property, and information that courts have forbidden from publication.

In view of the CIC recommendation on the petition, the cabinet secretariat issued a circular that said: "In order to ensure greater transparency and availability of information in public domain about the activities of the ministries/departments, it has been decided that henceforth, all ministries/departments may upload, on a monthly basis, the major achievements, significant developments and important events for the month in respect of their ministry/department."

In the three months since June, only four of the 52 ministries and eight of the 46 departments have complied; and not all of them have done so for every month. Of all the ministries, the coal ministry has been the most regular in posting its achievements; making CHRI wonder what was stopping other departments and ministries from complying.