Highest pendency in Maharashtra: Pune struggles under burden of 2nd RTI appeals

The Indian Express: Pune: Saturday, August 25, 2018.

By the end of July, over 8,000 Right To Information (RTI) second appeals were pending before the State Information Commissioner (SIC) bench in Pune, earning it the dubious distinction of being the SEC bench with the highest pendency in the state. Over 600 of the 8,746-second appeals in Pune date as far back as 2016, and are yet to be disposed of.

Of the 35,397 total pending second appeals in Maharashtra, Nashik and Amravati account for 8,093 and 7,505 pending appeals respectively. In Amravati, over 40 appeals date back to 2015. Second appeals are filed when RTI applicants are not satisfied with the response to their query, as furnished by the public information and appellate authorities. Second appeals are sent to the State Information Commissioners, who decide on the next course of action.

For most of 2017, Pune SIC Ravindra Jadhav held additional charge of the Nashik bench as well, and this was cited as one of the reasons in the delay in clearing pending appeals. Some government officials suggested that the number of second appeals has increased as many public information agencies refuse to share the information sought by the applicants.

Currently, Maharashtra has eight functional SIC benches, including the one headed by the chief state information commissioner in Mumbai, which has over 6,000-second appeals pending before it. Pune had a high pendency of second appeals last year as well, when 4,914 appeals were pending before the SIC bench, the highest in the state.

The annual report of the SIC had highlighted this issue and suggested setting up three more benches, including one in Pune.

RTI activists in the state lament that appeals pending for a long time hinder the effective implementation of the Act. Earlier, former Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi had said that a delay in procuring information under RTI could shake the confidence of the common man in the entire process. Gandhi had supported the idea of setting up extra benches to bring down the pendency.