Business Standard: New Delhi: Tuesday,
November 08, 2016.
Around
1,87,974 cases are pending, which comprise collective backlog in the disposal
of appeals and complaints, in the 16 state information commissions (SICs) as on
December 31, 2015, and penalty has been imposed in only 1.3% of the cases, a
study has found.
The study was
done jointly by Research, Assessment & Analysis Group (RaaG) and Satark
Nagrik Sangathan (SNS).
According to
the study, pendency in the Assam SIC went up by 240%, while Odisha and Punjab
went up by more than 60%.
The pendency
in Kerala SIC went up by 49%, while the Central Information Commission (CIC)
saw a rise of 43%.
"Despite
the dictum of the Supreme Court, more than 60% of the IC orders analysed
contained deficiencies in terms of not recording critical facts. Rajasthan and
Bihar SICs were the worst performers with 74% and 73% of the orders
respectively, not describing the information that was sought," said the
study.
The study
also revealed that in 9 of the 16 ICs for which data was available for 2016,
the waiting time for a hearing was more than one year.
"The
analysis of the IC websites revealed that many of the commissions had not
posted their annual reports on the web and very few had updated the
information.
As the
analysis was done in September 2016, it would be reasonable to expect that
annual reports up to 2015 would be available on the websites. Yet, 21 out of 28
ICs (75%) did not provide the annual report for 2015, said the study.
It also added
that the percentage of orders, in which the subsidiary directions were not in
compliance with the RTI Act, was more than 65%.
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