Daily Excelsior: National: Monday, 19th October
2026.
The RTI Act has just come
of age, and its birthday brings little cause for celebration. As of 30 June
2026, some 3.85 lakh appeals and complaints were pending across 28 information
commissions. In Tripura, the estimated wait for disposal stretches to nearly
twenty years; in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh it is only marginally shorter.
A law meant to deliver information in thirty days now delivers a delay measured
in decades. That is denial by another name. The CIC offers no comfort. Its
pendency rose by 9,378 between January and October this year, despite a full
complement of eleven commissioners. Nor is the picture improved by the practice
of returning appeals without orders: nine commissions sent back 37,701 cases in
a single year, the CIC alone returning 14,603 of the 31,179 registered. Earlier
data suggest that most such appeals are never re-filed. Rejection on technical
grounds quietly shrinks the backlog while shrinking the citizen's right with
it.
The instinctive remedy is to add commissioners or benches. That may bring temporary relief only. Appeals multiply because first-stage responses fail; every unanswered or evasive reply from a public authority becomes another file on a commission's desk. However, additional offices, staff and premises carry recurring costs, and no exchequer can fund a queue that grows faster than capacity. The solution lies upstream, with the departments themselves. After twenty-one years, the Government holds ample data to identify which offices generate the most appeals, which routinely ignore deadlines and which withhold information without justification. It should act on it. Every department should be required to publish a monthly report. Such returns would expose poor performers at once and make good practice visible.
Accountability must then follow. The head of each department should answer for non-response, unjustified refusal and concealment. The Act already provides for penalties, yet commissions seldom impose them, and recovery is rarer still. When officials know that delay costs them personally, compliance will improve faster than any new bench could manage. Commissions, for their part, must stop treating procedure as a gatekeeper. Appeals from poor and marginalised citizens, who often proceed without legal help, should not founder on formatting. If the basic material is present, the case should be heard. None of this requires fresh legislation or large budgets, only political will. Left unaddressed, rising pendency will hollow out the Act from within, leaving a statute that promises transparency and delivers opacity.
The instinctive remedy is to add commissioners or benches. That may bring temporary relief only. Appeals multiply because first-stage responses fail; every unanswered or evasive reply from a public authority becomes another file on a commission's desk. However, additional offices, staff and premises carry recurring costs, and no exchequer can fund a queue that grows faster than capacity. The solution lies upstream, with the departments themselves. After twenty-one years, the Government holds ample data to identify which offices generate the most appeals, which routinely ignore deadlines and which withhold information without justification. It should act on it. Every department should be required to publish a monthly report. Such returns would expose poor performers at once and make good practice visible.
Accountability must then follow. The head of each department should answer for non-response, unjustified refusal and concealment. The Act already provides for penalties, yet commissions seldom impose them, and recovery is rarer still. When officials know that delay costs them personally, compliance will improve faster than any new bench could manage. Commissions, for their part, must stop treating procedure as a gatekeeper. Appeals from poor and marginalised citizens, who often proceed without legal help, should not founder on formatting. If the basic material is present, the case should be heard. None of this requires fresh legislation or large budgets, only political will. Left unaddressed, rising pendency will hollow out the Act from within, leaving a statute that promises transparency and delivers opacity.
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