New Indian Express: Editorials: Thursday, 23 October 2025.
The right to information is not a bureaucratic courtesy; it is a constitutional guarantee that empowers the citizen and disciplines the state
As of the end of 2024,
total number of second appeals and complaints pending in Central information
commission stands at 22,596
A villager’s seven-year wait for information ending in two appeals and an eventual dismissal by the Odisha Information Commission (OIC) has rightly drawn the ire of the Orissa High Court. The case, which the court last week sent back to the State Information Commissioner for a fresh hearing, stands as a travesty of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
The story began in 2017, when a resident of Bhadrak district petitioned the state chief secretary, seeking removal of illegal encroachments from a government plot in his village. His representation set off a chain of administrative directions, but no real action followed. Left in the dark, he turned to the RTI Act in 2018 only to be told in the first appeal that “information is not available.”
Worse followed. In February 2024, the OIC chose to rely on a joint affidavit filed by the First Appellate Authority and the Public Information Officer to drop the matter altogether. That prompted the villager to seek judicial redress and the High Court did not mince words. It held that the OIC had “mechanically accepted” the state authorities’ version, ignoring glaring contradictions. “If such a stand of the state authorities is accepted at face value… without due scrutiny, the right of a citizen to get information as codified by the Act, 2005, would be a dead letter,” the court observed.
That sharp observation cuts to the heart of the problem. The RTI Act was enacted to “contain corruption and hold governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed.” When information commissions the very institutions meant to uphold the Act allow themselves to be “entrapped in officialdom and red-tapism,” as the court put it, they erode public faith in transparency itself.
This order should serve as a wake-up call to all state information commissions. The right to information is not a bureaucratic courtesy; it is a constitutional guarantee that empowers the citizen and disciplines the state. Transparency in public authorities is the cornerstone of accountable governance, and information remains the most powerful weapon in the citizen’s arsenal. To fulfil their mandate, information commissions must stand firmly independent of the administrative machinery not become a part of it.
The right to information is not a bureaucratic courtesy; it is a constitutional guarantee that empowers the citizen and disciplines the state
A villager’s seven-year wait for information ending in two appeals and an eventual dismissal by the Odisha Information Commission (OIC) has rightly drawn the ire of the Orissa High Court. The case, which the court last week sent back to the State Information Commissioner for a fresh hearing, stands as a travesty of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
The story began in 2017, when a resident of Bhadrak district petitioned the state chief secretary, seeking removal of illegal encroachments from a government plot in his village. His representation set off a chain of administrative directions, but no real action followed. Left in the dark, he turned to the RTI Act in 2018 only to be told in the first appeal that “information is not available.”
Worse followed. In February 2024, the OIC chose to rely on a joint affidavit filed by the First Appellate Authority and the Public Information Officer to drop the matter altogether. That prompted the villager to seek judicial redress and the High Court did not mince words. It held that the OIC had “mechanically accepted” the state authorities’ version, ignoring glaring contradictions. “If such a stand of the state authorities is accepted at face value… without due scrutiny, the right of a citizen to get information as codified by the Act, 2005, would be a dead letter,” the court observed.
That sharp observation cuts to the heart of the problem. The RTI Act was enacted to “contain corruption and hold governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed.” When information commissions the very institutions meant to uphold the Act allow themselves to be “entrapped in officialdom and red-tapism,” as the court put it, they erode public faith in transparency itself.
This order should serve as a wake-up call to all state information commissions. The right to information is not a bureaucratic courtesy; it is a constitutional guarantee that empowers the citizen and disciplines the state. Transparency in public authorities is the cornerstone of accountable governance, and information remains the most powerful weapon in the citizen’s arsenal. To fulfil their mandate, information commissions must stand firmly independent of the administrative machinery not become a part of it.
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