Free Press Journal: Mumbai: August 03, 2024.
Under Section 25(1) of the RTI Act 2005, the SIC must prepare an annual report on public authorities' performance, including RTI application data, appeals, complaints, and pendency statistics.
Raising questions on the working of the State Information Commission (SIC), social activists from Mumbai have written a letter to the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Samir Sahai, informing him about the delay in publishing annual reports for two consecutive years. The activists stated that there has been wilful, deliberate and unreasonable delay in publishing the 17th annual report for December 31, 2022 and 18th annual report for December 31, 2023.
Referring the letter written by the CIC to the state chief secretary on May 22, 2024, the activists, Mehul Haria and Kamlakar Shenoy, stated that the CIC clearly mentioned about failure in discharging duty by 24 departments of the state government to provide information as required under Section 25 of the RTI Act. Only 10 public authorities have provided the required data till the date, the letter said.
“It has come to our knowledge that 24 government departments in Maharashtra have failed to submit their mandatory RTI data to the SIC. We are deeply concerned since the CIC mentioned in the letter that reports not received from several departments shall be declared as ‘Not Received’ in the final report. This statement goes against the spirit and purpose of the RTI Act and amounts to wilful and deliberate concealment of public data, violation of fundamental rights of every citizen of India,” the activists say.
Meanwhile, official sources said that some departments have started submitting their annual reports following the letter from the CIC. “The Department of Cooperative, Marketing and Textiles has submitted the report on July 24, 2024 for the period between January and December, 2022. We hope that other departments follow the same and submit their reports to the SIC at the earliest.”
Shenoy and Haria also asked the CIC to provide the sections under the RTI Act which empowers office of the CIC to provide incomplete information in the annual report; turn blind eye on erring officers in the departments which disobeys the direction of section 25 of RTI Act; permit illegal practice to cause unreasonable delay in submitting the annual report which is most mandatory document and create wrong precedent; not to issue direction and SOP for compulsory compliance of annual report within stipulated period besides all consequential and coercive action to be initiated against erring officers who disobey to provide information as required under section 25 of the RTI ACT.
As per Section 25(1) of the RTI Act 2005, the SIC is mandated to prepare an annual report detailing the performance of various public authorities, including data on RTI applications received, first appeals, second appeals, complaints received and disposed of, and pendency statistics at various sub-information commissions.
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