The central information commissioner (CIC), Shailesh Gandhi, said on Saturday that the Right To Information (RTI) was under threat due to the increasing number of appeals pending before information commissioners in the country.
He was speaking as chief guest at a regional workshop sponsored by the directorate of personnel and training on ‘Proactive disclosures: the way forward’. The workshop was organised by Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (Yashada). Delegates from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra participated in the workshop.
When a person is not satisfied with the information provided to him by the public information officer (PIO) or if the information is not provided at all, the applicant can appeal to an appellate authority, who is a superior officer of the PIO. If the applicant is not satisfied with the decision of the appellate authority, the person can appeal to the information commissioner and this is called second appeal. The information commissioners are quasi-judicial authorities and have powers to fine officials for not following the RTI Act, 2005.
Hence, pendency of second appeals before information commissioners is an important issue regarding effective implementation of RTI.
Gandhi has disposed of thousands of second appeals after taking over as CIC.
He said the number of pending second appeals in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa is increasingly steadily.
“Pendency of second appeals is a slow poison. It is the most important threat to RTI,” he said.
Gandhi said the rising pending second appeals would pose a serious threat to RTI within 10 years and increasing the number of information commissioners to dispose of RTI appeals is not the only solution. He added that information commissioners can dispose of up to 6,000 appeals in a year.
Additional collector, Chandrakant Pulkundwar and RTI activists, Vijay Kumbhar, Bhaskar Prabhu and Vivek Velankar participated in the panel discussion.
Yashada director general, Sanjay Chahande and director (centre for public policy), Pralhad Kachare were present at the workshop.
