Times of India: New Delhi: Tuesday,
November 08, 2016.
If you file a
query under the Right to Information (RTI) Act in Assam today, you might have
to wait 30 years for your appeal to be heard by the information commissioner
(IC). The "waiting period" in West Bengal is over 11 years and seven
in Kerala.
A new study
of the working of information commissions in 16 states shows that the RTI Act's
purpose of ensuring greater transparency is being throttled by the sheer
pendency of cases 1.87 lakh as on December 2015.
Though the
Act empowers the ICs to impose penalties of up to Rs 25,000 on erring public
information officers for violations, penalties have been imposed in only 1.3%
of the cases in the 16 states, causing a potential loss of Rs 290 crore in
fines defaulting public authorities would have paid.
Despite an
increase in the number of ICs in the Central Information Commission, pendency
has increased from 13 months to 22 months.
A study of
the performance of information commissioners is being carried out by the
Research Assessment and Analysis Group and Satark Nagrik Sangathan. The key
findings don't bode well when it comes to implementing the RTI Act as matters
have worsened since the last RTI study in 2014.
The waiting
time in the Assam IC, which was two years eight months in 2014, has now shot up
to 30 years. West Bengal has improved its pendency, cutting the waiting time
down from 17 years 3 months to 11 years and 3 months. But Kerala fares badly,
with the waiting time increasing to seven years four months from two years
three months in 2014.
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