Moneylife: Pune: Tuesday, December 19, 2017.
In order to
reduce workload in Central Information Commission, Union Minister of State Dr
Jitendra Singh has come out with a novel idea where ‘one should file Right to
Information (RTI) only if the person has any connection with the
issues.Speaking at the CIC’s Annual Convention, the minister of state for
Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said, “We should try to respect the
spirit with which this law has been brought in instead of making it a nuisance.
It should not be that I file an RTI about someone unknown or to prove self as a
professional RTI activist.”
However, the
RTI Act stresses that information needs to be shared if there is a public
interest involved. Section 8 (2) of the RTI Act empowers the Public Information
Officer (PIO) to provide the exempted information if it is in the larger public
interest. This means that access to the exempted information can be allowed if
public interest is served in providing the information. For the larger public
interest, the applicant may not necessarily be directly connected with the
issue.
Dr Singh also
stated that due to the encouragement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, all the
vacancies of Information Commissioners (ICs) have been filled by the
Government. With the launch of the RTI portal, he said, the number of RTI
online requests have increased manifold and credited its success to the prompt
response provided by Modi government to the grievances. He further urged that
the pendency of the cases has been significantly reduced by the Commission in
the recent years.
In his
inaugural address, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu stressed that information
under the RTI Act needs to be given in a language understandable to everyone
and especially to the person, who has requested it. The Vice President, urging
information commissioners to make a quick disposal of the grievances said, the
Central and State Information Commissions are a bridge between public
authorities and the citizens.
Earlier,
Chief Information Commissioner RK Mathur said that the CIC had cleared a large
part of backlog and by February 2018, the Commission will have to deal only
with cases filed from 2017. As on 1 April 2016, the CIC had a pendency of
around 35,000 cases, which came down to 26,000 by 31 March 2017. The CIC
managed to clear about 6,000 cases pending since past several years, Mr Mathur
said, adding, “All the filings have been done on the computer. Hearings can be
done on the computer and video conferencing. Registration is done within 48
hours. We have started an e-mail and SMS facility to keep track of appeals and
complaints.”
However, it
will be pertinent to note that there is a huge pendency of appeals and
complaints in the Maharashtra State Information Commission (SIC). In the
Maharashtra SIC, the pending second appeals and complaints in October 2017 are
38,579 and 2,599, respectively as per their website.
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