The Defence Ministry tops the list of Central government departments contributing the highest number of Right to Information (RTI) appeals pending hearing before the bench of the Chief Information Commissioner with 4,182 cases, according to the newly-appointed Commissioner Vijai Sharma who spoke exclusively to The Hindu during an interaction. Over 15,000 RTI queries had piled up before the Commissioner’s bench during the long gap between the retirement of the previous Chief Information Commissioner Rajiv Mathur in August last and the appointment of Mr. Sharma this month.
Other Central government departments contributing to the large number of cases pending before the Commissioner include Railways (3,056), Human Resource Development (1,669) and the Indian Air Force(1,499). Ironically, the Department of Personnel and Training, responsible for ensuring the implementation of the RTI Act, with 1,476 pending cases, is the fifth Central government department. When government departments do not dispose of RTI petitions coming to them in a time-bound manner, information seekers file appeals for hearings before the Central Information Commission.
Mr. Sharma says he would like to use a mix of imposition of penalties and encouragement for proactive disclosure of information already available with the departments to ensure that the pendency comes down. “With the advantage of technology, the focus should now be on the automaticity of information provision,” he said.
There are two types of cases pending hearing, one are cases of grievance redress of citizens, for example, somebody unsuccessful in booking an emergency quota ticket with the Railways asking why someone else got the reservation. Others are cases of government employees or citizens with a grudge against an individual working in a public authority seeking information for personal benefit. However, genuine cases of grievance redress and queries pertaining to the use of official discretion, to detect misuse of official powers, far exceed the personal vendetta-driven petitions, Mr. Sharma said.
Budget cuts, new buildingSources within the Central Information Commission (CIC) requesting anonymity told The Hindu that following 40 per cent budget cuts in 2015 and the DoPT’s refusal to pay anything more than the minimum wage to the support staff, the day-to-day functioning of the Commission has been crippled. “We are forced to renew the contracts of support staff every year, often with the risk of losing helpers like data entry operators who we train with great difficulty to handle sensitive material,” the source said.
However, Mr. Sharma refused comment on the resource crunch and pointed instead to the CIC soon getting a building of its own out of which to function. A budget of Rs. 43.53 crore has already been sanctioned for the project and the National Buildings Construction Corporation Ltd. is in the advanced stage of finalising the concept plan for the building, he said.
Mr. Sharma also sought to put to rest concerns regarding curtailment of the financial autonomy of the CIC, by saying that after the retirement of the former Chief Information Commissioner, the secretary of the CIC took over the financial responsibilities of running the Commission and it was only “a matter of technicality” before these functional powers were restored to him as the new appointee to the post.
