Counterview: National: Saturday, 20 June 2026.
The Annual Report of the
Central Information Commission (CIC) for the year 2024-25 was released in
mid-February this year. Some trends with regard to the disposal of RTI
applications, particularly rejections, were reported by some segments of the
media. But there is much more in these statistical reports that deserves our
attention with regard to the manner of implementation of The Right to
Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) across the Union Government.
Now, on the occasion of the RTI Act entering the 22nd year of its implementation, we have attempted a deep dive into the statistics published in the annual report to spot trends of improvement and deterioration across the Union Government and the Union Territories. You will recall that the RTI Act came into effect with its publication in the Official Gazette on 21 June 2005. The application and appeal-related provisions became operational later in October that year.
We have published detailed analyses of the CIC's annual reports from time to time. In the current study we have examined the RTI statistics reported by 53 ministries and the two independent departments of Atomic Energy and Space (total = 55). We have also separately studied the data of a dozen (12) key public authorities, namely the President's Secretariat, Prime Minister's Office, Supreme Court of India, Comptroller and Auditor General's Office, Election Commission of India, Cabinet Secretariat, the three defence forces Army, Navy and Air Force Delhi Police, NITI Aayog and the CIC itself. Please refer to the accompanying MS Excel spreadsheet for the data table we have compiled based on the CIC's annual reports for 2024-25 and 2023-24.
The findings from our study of the CIC's latest annual report (2024-25) in comparison with that of the immediately preceding year (2023-24) are presented under the following segments:
Major Findings
After 21 years of enforcement of the RTI Act, the CIC must make the effort to redefine its role from being a mere accountant of RTI statistics to that of an auditor of the performance of ministries, departments and public authorities vis-à-vis their obligations under the regime of transparency established by the RTI Act. There is much that needs to be done to improve the performance of CPIOs and FAAs. There is no need to look abroad for examples of good practice. Several ministries, departments and public authorities have taken the necessary steps to dispose of RTIs and appeals in a timely manner while others have been laggard.
The CIC must initiate academic studies to analyse what has worked in some public authorities and what has hindered others from implementing the RTI Act effectively. This law, which gives effect to a fundamental right, was expected to be a game changer when implementation commenced in 2005. The wait for the game to change has been two decades long, with little documentation to show how governance processes have been reformed using RTIs as feedback for poor, weak and unaccountable administration.
Perhaps it is time to appoint a body to examine the impact of RTI on public administration at the Union and state levels.
Now, on the occasion of the RTI Act entering the 22nd year of its implementation, we have attempted a deep dive into the statistics published in the annual report to spot trends of improvement and deterioration across the Union Government and the Union Territories. You will recall that the RTI Act came into effect with its publication in the Official Gazette on 21 June 2005. The application and appeal-related provisions became operational later in October that year.
We have published detailed analyses of the CIC's annual reports from time to time. In the current study we have examined the RTI statistics reported by 53 ministries and the two independent departments of Atomic Energy and Space (total = 55). We have also separately studied the data of a dozen (12) key public authorities, namely the President's Secretariat, Prime Minister's Office, Supreme Court of India, Comptroller and Auditor General's Office, Election Commission of India, Cabinet Secretariat, the three defence forces Army, Navy and Air Force Delhi Police, NITI Aayog and the CIC itself. Please refer to the accompanying MS Excel spreadsheet for the data table we have compiled based on the CIC's annual reports for 2024-25 and 2023-24.
The findings from our study of the CIC's latest annual report (2024-25) in comparison with that of the immediately preceding year (2023-24) are presented under the following segments:
- Compliance with regard to the obligation of reporting RTI statistics
- Trends with regard to the receipt and disposal of RTI applications
- Trends with regard to the backlog of RTI applications
- Trends with regard to the transfer of RTI applications
- Trends with regard to fees and penalties collected
- Trends with regard to RTI applications replied to
- Trends with regard to the workload of Public Information Officers
- Trends with regard to the rejection of RTI applications
- Trends with regard to the receipt and disposal of first appeals
- Trends with regard to the workload of First Appellate Authorities
Major Findings
- According to the RTI Online Portal, there are 2,914 public authorities registered on it to receive RTI applications and first appeals in digital mode. But the CIC has claimed that the submission of RTI-related statistics in 2024-25 by 2,303 public authorities amounts to 100% compliance. Surely, more than 600 public authorities could not have been added to the RTI Portal since the publication of the latest annual report. So, the CIC's claim of 100% reporting compliance is open to doubt.
- The RTI statistics of the Union Territory (UT) Administration of Ladakh have never been reported since the bifurcation of the erstwhile J&K in 2019. Having promoted the use of RTI in undivided J&K, we are aware of the existence of a vibrant group of RTI activists in Ladakh. Unfortunately, data about their interventions does not merit a mention in the CIC's annual reports.
- There is a growth of 2.52% in the volume of applications submitted in 2024-25. If the RTI statistics of the UTs are excluded, the growth in volume becomes 1.26%. However, if 2020-21, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, is reckoned as the base year, the growth in volume is 34%.
- The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (2.54 lakhs) with 65 reporting public authorities has, for the first time, overtaken the Ministry of Finance (2.20 lakhs) with more than 200 reporting public authorities in terms of the highest number of RTI applications received.
- The top five ministries Corporate Affairs, Finance, Railways, Education and Defence covering only a quarter (25.05%) of the 2,303 reporting public authorities, accounted for more than half (51.52%) of the total number of RTI applications received in 2024-25. The top ten ministries (33.04% of the reporting public authorities), each reporting receipt of more than 50,000 RTIs, account for more than two thirds of the RTI applications received in 2024-25.
- The backlog of RTI applications pending from the previous year across the 2,303 reporting public authorities increased by 3.03% in 2024-25. The Corporate Affairs Ministry had reported a backlog of 12,413 RTIs in 2023-24 but in 2024-25 it was only 1,619, indicating serious efforts to drastically reduce the backlog.
- The Indian Air Force (2,999), PMO (282), Election Commission of India (168), the Central Information Commission (101) and NITI Aayog (71) reported significant increases in backlog figures in 2024-25 as compared to the previous year.
- The UTs of Delhi and J&K reported a considerable increase in the number of RTIs received in 2024-25 in comparison with the previous year's figures.
- There is an almost 18% increase in the volume of RTI applications transferred between public authorities in 2024-25 (2,80,353) as compared with the figures reported in 2023-24 (2,37,671). The Cabinet Secretariat (51.66%) transferred one out of every two RTIs it received in 2024-25. The proportion of transfers was the lowest in the Corporate Affairs Ministry (2.21%).
- While there is a rise of 2.52% in the volume of RTI applications in 2024-25 over the previous year, the quantum of application fee collected decreased by 6.15% and the amount of additional fees collected is down by 4.21%. Despite reporting a 13.07% increase in the number of RTI applications received in 2024-25, the Corporate Affairs Ministry's fee collection (application and additional fees included) fell by 31.36% in comparison with the previous year's figures.
- In the narrative portion of its annual report, the CIC states that the total amount of penalties imposed in 2024-25 was Rs. 1,56,750, out of which Rs. 99,815 was paid by the errant CPIOs. However, in the last column of the detailed data table where the RTI statistics submitted by all 2,303 public authorities are totalled, only Rs. 453 is mentioned as the amount of penalty collected by them (see page 184). Even more bewildering are the penalty amounts claimed by the following ministries: Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension: Rs. 79 (Department of Personnel and Training); Coal: Rs. 17 (Southeastern Coal Fields Ltd.); External Affairs: Rs. 2 (Embassy of India in Argentina and Passport Seva Division: Re. 1 each); and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME DI, Mumbai: Re. 1). The UT of Delhi collected a penalty of Rs. 4 (Directorate of Ayush: Rs. 2; Delhi Consumers Cooperative Wholesale Store Ltd. and Rajya Sainik Board: Re. 1 each). These figures are much lower than the minimum penalty of Rs. 250 that can be imposed under the RTI Act.
- At 13.81 lakhs, the number of RTIs to which the 2,303 public authorities replied in 2024-25 was 3.46% lower than the 14.30 lakh RTIs to which 2,298 public authorities replied in 2023-24.
- Many public authorities complain that they are groaning under the burden of RTI-related work, which prevents them from carrying out other mandated work. With the appointment of more CPIOs under the Union Government (excluding the PIOs appointed in the UTs), the average annual expected workload per CPIO that is, if the PIO were to dispose of all RTIs received within the same year has actually come down from 63.88 in 2023-24 to 63.02 in 2024-25. Consequently, the monthly workload has also reduced from 5.32 to 5.25 RTIs per CPIO during this period.
- In terms of the number of RTIs to which CPIOs actually replied in 2024-25 (excluding those in the UTs), the average was 49.85 RTIs per CPIO and the monthly average was 4.15 RTIs per CPIO. In 2023-24, the average was 53.15 RTIs per CPIO and the monthly average was 4.4 RTIs per CPIO. So, the average workload per CPIO fell in 2024-25 as compared with the workload in 2023-24. Details of the workload among the top five ministries, 12 key public authorities and the UTs are in the attachment.
- According to the CIC, 3% of the RTI applications that is, 58,501 requests were rejected by 2,303 public authorities across the Union Government including the UTs that reported their RTI data in 2024-25. However, at the end of the data table in Annexure 1 of the CIC's annual report, the total of the exemption clause-wise rejections is shown as 57,985 cases. We have taken this figure for the purpose of analysis instead of the figure 58,501. The rationale for this choice is mentioned in Segment VIII of the attachment.
- Almost 35% of the cases of rejection of RTIs reported across the Union Government including the UTs in 2024-25 are for unspecified reasons other than the ten exemption clauses contained in Sections 8, 9 and 11 of the RTI Act and Section 24, which partially excludes intelligence and security organisations from the general obligations of transparency. This proportion is slightly lower than the 36.47% reported in 2023-24. Public authorities in the UTs used the "others" category significantly fewer times to reject RTIs in comparison with the Union Government. The last page of the attached data table gives a snapshot view of the number of times each of the exemptions was used to reject requests during both years under study.
- Public authorities under the Finance Ministry rejected 36.74% of the cases of rejections totalled under the Union Government (UTs included). Even though the Ministry of Home Affairs does not figure in the top five list of ministries receiving the largest number of RTI applications, it takes second place with 7,370 rejections — that is, 12.71% of the total number of rejections — followed by the Defence Ministry with 4,937 rejections, or 8.51% of the total. Just these three ministries contributed to more than half (almost 58%) of the total number of rejections. The ministries of Cooperation, Panchayati Raj, Tribal Affairs, Minority Affairs, Parliamentary Affairs and Development of the Northeastern Region reported nil rejections.
- The Election Commission of India (ECI) reported zero rejections for the years 2024-25 and 2023-24. However, this author was denied access to information under Section 7(9) in at least two cases by the CPIOs of the ECI during this period. This does not count as rejection for the ECI. These two RTI applications and the ECI's responses are attached to this despatch.
- The use of national security-related grounds under Section 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act came down by almost 50% in 2024-25 (1,008 cases) in comparison with the previous year (2,206 cases). The use of Section 8(1)(j), relating to the personal privacy of third parties, increased from 36.36% in 2023-24 to 38.69% in 2024-25. While Section 8(1)(g), pertaining to the intelligence-gathering exemption, was used in more cases in 2024-25, the exemption relating to investigation and prosecution of offenders was used in fewer cases as compared with the figures reported in 2023-24.
- For those who think that truckloads of RTI applications are filed with the Indian Army every year, threatening national security, it needs to be pointed out that Section 8(1)(a) was invoked in only one case in 2024-25. In 2023-24, this exemption was invoked in 60 cases. Of the 744 cases in which permissible exemptions were invoked by the CPIOs of the Indian Army, 737 were for protecting personal privacy under Section 8(1)(j) of the Act.
- The number of appeals filed with the first appellate authorities (FAAs) across the Union Government (UTs included) was two and a half times more than the number of rejections recorded in 2024-25, indicating a very high level of dissatisfaction with the response to, or the lack of response to, RTI applications. The proportion of first appeals to the number of RTIs filed was much higher in 2024-25 as compared with the previous year. Thankfully, the FAAs disposed of more first appeals in 2024-25 than they did during the previous year, but the percentage of disposal had fallen in comparison with 2023-24.
- The ministries of Finance, Education, Railways, Defence and Home Affairs accounted for more than one half (51.85%) of the total number of first appeals filed across the Union Government (UTs included).
- FAAs in many public authorities complain that they are groaning under the burden of RTI-related work, which prevents them from doing other mandated work. Overall, 11,425 FAAs across the Union Government (UTs included) disposed of 1.12 lakh of the 1.86 lakh first appeals. This amounts to an average of 9.85 cases per FAA per year, bringing the monthly average to a figure well below one. Strangely, the number of FAAs fell by 47.15% from the 2023-24 figure. Consequently, the average workload on each FAA almost doubled from 5.07 to 9.85 in 2024-25. The reasons for this drastic reduction in the number of FAAs do not merit a discussion in the CIC's latest annual report.
- Almost 40% (73,791 cases) of the first appeals remained pending across the 2,303 public authorities across the Union Government (including the UTs) at the end of the reporting year for 2024-25. At the end of the previous year 2023-24, the pendency was slightly lower at almost 38% of the cases (67,190) filed that year.
- The poorest first appeal disposal rates in 2024-25 were reported by the Supreme Court of India (0.67%), Election Commission of India (1.88%), Comptroller and Auditor General (2.75%) and the PMO (6.15%). The lone FAA appointed in the President's Secretariat managed to dispose of more than 90% of the 850 appeals filed in 2024-25. Two FAAs of the Central Information Commission disposed of 593 of the 616 cases received in 2024-25 (96.27%), averaging 296.5 cases per FAA per year. This is one of the best performances across public authorities that handled first appeals in the hundreds, and the performance had actually improved over that reported in 2023-24.
After 21 years of enforcement of the RTI Act, the CIC must make the effort to redefine its role from being a mere accountant of RTI statistics to that of an auditor of the performance of ministries, departments and public authorities vis-à-vis their obligations under the regime of transparency established by the RTI Act. There is much that needs to be done to improve the performance of CPIOs and FAAs. There is no need to look abroad for examples of good practice. Several ministries, departments and public authorities have taken the necessary steps to dispose of RTIs and appeals in a timely manner while others have been laggard.
The CIC must initiate academic studies to analyse what has worked in some public authorities and what has hindered others from implementing the RTI Act effectively. This law, which gives effect to a fundamental right, was expected to be a game changer when implementation commenced in 2005. The wait for the game to change has been two decades long, with little documentation to show how governance processes have been reformed using RTIs as feedback for poor, weak and unaccountable administration.
Perhaps it is time to appoint a body to examine the impact of RTI on public administration at the Union and state levels.
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