RTI getting popular in state: SIC

Kuldeep Chauhan 

Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 27 

The Right to Information Act (RTI) has turned out to be a potential weapon in the hands of people. 

It is being used by politicians, contractors or businessmen to serve mainly their individual purpose in most cases, revealed inputs from the State Information Commission (SIC).

SIC Bhim Sen said: “Whether it is the Congress charge sheet against the BJP regime submitted to the President of India or the BJP charge sheet which is currently doing the rounds in the state, RTI Act has come in handy to browbeat political rivals mainly when the elections are around the corner.”

Not only this, the commission has also not analysed the data whether RTI Act is bringing about good governance, checking corruption in government departments or public authorities or not, he said.  

Sen, however, claimed that the number of applicants seeking RTI information from public authorities has shot up by 30 times since 2006-07 till 2012-13. 

“But then there are first appeal or second appeal cases that come before the commission, which directly or indirectly serves their purpose,” Sen said, while talking to mediapersons here today. 

“We treat every RTI information seeker as a citizen who has the right to get official information,” said Sen. 

“From April to December 31, 2014, we received 759 complaints including 277 pending complaints from the previous year, of which 595 have been disposed of. In all, 5,819 complaints were received of which 5,655 have been disposed of,” he said. 

The rejection rate by PIOs has gone up by 12 times from 119 applications in 2007 to 1,396 applications in 2012-13. 

Sen said: “Strict action can be initiated against PIOs for not giving correct information or delaying it.” 

As many as 110 public authorities have received 61,202 applications and rejected 1,396 and first appeals received by the first appellate authorities was just 1,232 and collected a fine of Rs14.45 lakh from the erring PIOs- a drop of Rs5 lakh over previous year.

CIC imposed a penalty of Rs15.81 lakh in 156 cases and awarded a compensation of Rs6.20 lakh in 299 cases since 2006-07 till December 2014.