The ‘Report Card on the Performance of Information Commissions in India’, which was published in 2021, revealed that Maharashtra’s state information commission (SIC) registered the highest number of second appeals and complaints to the tune of 41,978, which moved up to 87,577 cases later that year and has now disastrously spiked to 100,43 lakh.
Right to Information (RTI) activist Jeetendra Ghadge, who recently culled out this information, states, “The information commissioners in eight benches across Maharashtra are responsible for the number of growing pendencies. The data I procured shockingly reveals that the SIC has not made its annual reports from 2019 to 2021. Even its annual report for 2018 is pending in the assembly. These annual reports contain crucial data of disciplinary action taken against the information officers by the state information commission.”
Shailesh Gandhi, former central information commissioner (CIC) and RTI activist, tweeted, saying, “It will have the shameful credit of constricting RTI. The government is probably considering handing over RTI to the archaeology department.”
Mr Ghadge alleges, “There is a systematic conspiracy by the powerful bureaucracy and politicians to slowly kill the RTI Act, which has been a headache for the corrupt in the state. With such a disastrous performance by the commission itself, the RTI Act might go into a ‘coma’ in the next two years.”
In August 2020, a group of RTI activists under the banner of RTI Katta Online, spearheaded by Vijay Kumbhar with the main petitioner being Mr Gandhi, sought the intervention of the Bombay High Court. The public interest litigation (PIL) is still pending. They have sought the detailed roadmap whereby the second appeals and complaints filed before it are disposed of within 45 days from the date of filing.
Several court orders compel the information commissioners across the country to dispose of complaints and second appeals within 45 days, but this, of course, is not being done.
Mr Kumbhar says, “When the second appeal is not heard and disposed of for an unreasonable period and in fact in some cases, even for more than a year, then this entire time-bound scheme of the Act goes adrift resulting in a grave miscarriage of justice. It undermines the faith of the people of India in participatory democracy, which requires an informed citizenry and transparency of information.’’
The PIL has quoted the following High Court judgments between 2010 and 2015 regarding the 45-day deadline for disposal of complaints and second appeals by information commissions:
- In view of the time-bound scheme of the RTI Act, the Hon’ble High Court of Calcutta in W.P. No. 11933 (W) of 2010 Akhil Kumar Roy v/s. The WBIC & Ors. laid down a ratio the gist of which is as follows:
That the second appeals filed before an information commission should be decided within a period of 45 days from the date of filing thereof, and that this period should be considered as a reasonable period for deciding a second appeal.
- The High Court at Calcutta in W. P. No. 15349 (W) of 2012 in Alok Patwari v. The State Chief Information Commissioner & Ors relied upon its own decision in W.P. No. 11933 (W) of 2010 (supra) and held as follows:
“I entirely agree with the decision of the said learned Judge and hold that the second appeal preferred by the petitioner on April 19, 2010 ought to have been disposed of within 45 days from its receipt.”
- The High Court of Karnataka in Writ Petition 28310 of 2015 Jayaprakash Reddy v/s Central Information Commission & Union of India represented by the Secretary, Ministry of Law & Justice, Parliament House, New Delhi 110 001 too laid down a ratio the gist of which is as follows:
That the second appeals filed before an information commission should be decided within a period of 45 days from the date of filing thereof, and that this period should be considered as a reasonable period for deciding a second appeal.
RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj, who was a part of the team of Satark Nagrik Sanghatan, which compiled the Report Card 2021 of the Information Commissions, says, “A whopping 2.56 lakh appeals and complaints (now even more) are pending in the 26 information commissions. This is a serious matter as information commissions set up at the Central and state level are the final appellate authority and are mandated to safeguard and facilitate people’s fundamental right to information.”
For this research, a total of 156 RTI applications were filed with state and Central information commissions. In addition, information was also sourced from the websites and annual reports of information commissions.
As per the Report Card of Information Commissioners, 2021, while the estimated time required for disposal of an appeal/complaint in the CIC was one year & 11 months, for Maharashtra SIC it was three years & six months! The long delays in disposal of cases is mainly attributed to two factors: vacancies in commissions (discussed above) and tardy rate of disposal by commissioners.
(Vinita Deshmukh is consulting editor of Moneylife. She is also the convener of the Pune Metro Jagruti Abhiyaan. She is the recipient of prestigious awards like the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting, which she won twice in 1998 and 2005 and the Chameli Devi Jain award for outstanding media person for her investigation series on Dow Chemicals. She co-authored the book “To The Last Bullet - The Inspiring Story of A Braveheart - Ashok Kamte” with Vinita Kamte and is the author of “The Mighty Fall”.)
