Delay in Replies to Appeals and Complaints Killing RTI Movement, Warn Activists.

The Wire: Gaurav Bhatngar: Mumbai: Saturday, July 11, 2020.

Legal notice sent to Maharashtra SIC says in place of maximum 45 days, mostly replies took one to three years.

Exasperated by the tardy pace of disposal of cases filed under the Right to Information Act and delays in the furnishing of replies to the second appeals, RTI activists in Maharashtra have now served a legal notice to the State Information Commission to lay out a roadmap to ensure timely reply to queries and disposal of cases.

Coming under the banner of RTI Katta, the activists have cited various Supreme Court and high court rulings in support of their demand that replies to second appeals should be furnished within 45 days. The activists cautioned that if these directives are not followed, they would be compelled to take “appropriate legal remedies in a court of law in the interest of justice.”

One of the signatories of the notice, former central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi, told The Wire that though Information Commissions were created to be the guardians of RTI, most have shown “scant responsibility to safeguarding the citizen’s fundamental right”.

“A primary reason for the RTI Act going through a stagnation phase is the indefinite waiting periods at the various Information Commissions. A law which promised to get the citizen his fundamental right to information within 30 days is being made useless by the Information Commissions, where second appeals hibernate for one-three years very often,” he lamented.