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15 Years of RTI

 


Why in News

A report by the Satark Nagrik Sangathan and the Centre for Equity Studies has pointed out that more than 2.2 lakh Right to information cases are pending at the Central and State Information Commissions (ICs), which are the final courts of appeal under the RTI Act, 2005.

Key Points

  • Unavailability during Covid-19 lockdown: Out of the total 29 ICs that were studied, 21 were not holding any hearings.
    • Even the websites of 3 ICs -Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Nagaland -were not accessible during the lockdown.
    • Websites of 11 commissions out of 29, had no information/notification about the functioning of the IC during the lockdown.
  • Reduced Capacity: Of the 29 ICs, two ICs -Jharkhand and Tripura -were found to have no commissioners for varying lengths of time. They were completely defunct.
    • 4 were functioning without a Chief Information Commissioner -Bihar, Goa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
    • Under the RTI 2005 act, every commission should have a chief and up to 10 commissioners.
  • Delays and Backlogs: The assessment found that on average, the CIC takes 388 days (more than one year) to dispose of an appeal/complaint from the date that it was filed before the commission.
  • No Penalties: The report found that the Government officials face hardly any punishment for violating the law.
    • Penalties were imposed in only 2.2% of cases that were disposed of, despite previous analysis showing a rate of about 59% violations which should have triggered the process of penalty imposition.
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