A new report by civil rights groups has revealed that Kerala has been functioning with just one commissioner and Odisha with three. The CIC has four vacancies at present out of 11 sanctioned posts.
Overall, the number of complaints and appeals pending with all the commissions rose from 181,852 on December 31, 2016, to 199,186 on October 31, 2017. Credit: Isaac Bowen/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
New Delhi: With several information commissions throughout the country operating without even a chief information commissioner or with a depleted strength of information commissioners, the pendency of cases has grown by around 10%. With this, the estimated time for disposal of cases has also gone up – to as high as 43 years in the case of West Bengal. All these aspects have been highlighted in the ‘Report Card on the Performance of Information Commissions in India’ brought out by rights organisations Satark Nagrik Sangathan and the Centre for Equity Studies.
The report, which studied the trends in the information commission between January 1, 2016, and October 31, 2017, stated that every year 40-60 lakh applications are filed under the Right to Information Act, 2005 in India and the information commissions set up at the central level and in the states have been mandated to safeguard and facilitate people’s fundamental right to information.
However, while the commissions have the power under Section 19(8)(b) of the RTI Act to “require the public authority to compensate the complainant for any loss or other detriment suffered” and under section 19(8) and section 20 to impose penalties on erring officials, and under section 20(2) to recommend disciplinary action against a PIO for “persistent” violation of one or more provisions of the Act, the study said the experience in India has been that “the functioning of information commissions is a major bottleneck in the effective implementation of the RTI Act”.
‘Several state commissions rendered non-functional’
Based on an analysis of 29 information commissions, the study has revealed that while every commission is supposed to have a chief information commissioner and up to ten information commissioners, “several ICs were non-functional or were functioning at reduced capacity as the posts of commissioners, including that of the chief information commissioner, were vacant”.
These included the Andhra Pradesh panel. After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the state information commission (SIC) continued to function as the information commission for both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, but it became defunct in May 2017 after the retirement of first the chief information commissioner followed closely by the retirement of the lone information commissioner.
Telangana constituted its own SIC in September 2017 and so did not have a functional commission for over three months. The Andhra Pradesh government issued an order for constitution of its own SIC in August 2017 but till date, no commissioner has been appointed.
The SIC of West Bengal, the report said, is functioning with just two commissioners and during the period of review, it did not hear any appeals or complaints for 12 months as there was only one commissioner in the SIC during this time. The commission of Sikkim too remained defunct for a period of two months from December 2017 as its lone commissioner retired.
Many panels without heads; Kerala has just one commissioner
The study also pointed out that many of the commissions such as Maharashtra, Nagaland and Gujarat have been functioning without a CIC, whose role is critical since it includes superintendence, management and direction of the affairs of the body.
Many other panels were functioning at a reduced capacity due to vacancies. Notable among these was Kerala, which has been working with a single commissioner; Odisha has been functioning with just three commissioners despite having a pendency of 10,000 cases; and the Central Information Commission (CIC), which has four vacancies at the moment.
A major fallout of the commissions not working at full strength has been the rising pendency. In Kerala, the pendency as of October 31, 2017, had mounted to nearly 14,000 appeals and complaints. Overall, the number of complaints and appeals pending with all the commissions rose from 181,852 on December 31, 2016 to 199,186 on October 31, 2017. The maximum pendency was reported from Uttar Pradesh at 41,561, Maharashtra at 41,178, Karnataka at 32,992 and the CIC at 23,944.
2.14 lakh complaints disposed of, seven commissions did not submit data
When it came to the disposal of complaints, the CIC led the list with 54,219 appeals, followed by Uttar Pradesh at 42,911, Karnataka at 28,648 and Telangana at 20,257. Overall, 214,809 complaints were disposed of. This, however, does not include the figures of some of the major states like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu which did not share their data. The lowest number of appeals disposed off was by Mizoram at 21 and of complaints by Meghalaya at 63,
The study said “the huge backlog in the disposal of appeals and complaints by the commissions is one of the most serious problems being faced by the transparency regime in India. The high levels of pendency are often a result of non-appointment of commissioners” as also the “tardy functioning of existing commissioners”.
Due to this, the study said, the estimated time required for the disposal of an appeal or complaint has gone up to as high as 43 years in the case of West Bengal, followed by six years and six months in Kerala and five years in Odisha. The northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram and Sikkim fare far better on this yardstick with average disposal time frame for cases being less than three months.
Commissions fail to impose penalties that they should
The report said that while the information commissions are empowered to impose penalties of up to Rs 25,000 on erring PIOs for violations of the RTI Act, the ICs were imposing a penalty in only an extremely small fraction of the cases. The data from 22 commissions revealed that they had imposed a penalty in 4,194 cases amounting to Rs 4.41 crore during the period under review and the actual amount recovered was Rs 49.73 lakh.
The maximum penalty was imposed by Karnataka at Rs 1.69 crore followed by Haryana (Rs 95.97 lakh) and Uttarakhand (Rs 72 lakh). The CIC imposed penalty amounting to Rs 29.36 lakh during this period, while West Bengal and Mizoram did not impose any penalty.
CIC misinforming citizens about the number of pending cases?
The report also noted that “an extremely concerning finding of the study is that the website of the CIC appears to be providing misleading information about the number of appeals and complaints pending before it”.
Noting that “in response to an application filed under the RTI Act, the CIC stated that as of December 31, 2016, the total number of appeals and complaints pending with it were 28,502. However, the CIC website shows that only 364 cases were pending with the commission as on January 1, 2017,” the report said: “It is inexplicable how overnight the pendency figure reduced from 28,502 to 364!”
The CIC provided inconsistent data in response to RTI applications seeking information on the number of appeals and complaints pending before it. In response to the query on the number of pending cases as of October 31, 2017, in its initial reply, the CIC stated that 21,097 appeals and 3,533 complaints were pending. However, in a subsequent reply, the CIC stated that 20,484 appeals and 3,460 complaints were pending as of October 31, 2017.
No explanation was given for providing a different set of pendency figures for the same time period.
In 96% of cases, commissions did not impose the requisite penalty
The study further stated that the data supplied by 20 commissions on the penalty imposed showed that penalty was imposed in just 2.4% of the cases disposed of.
Stating that “a random sample of orders of information commissions had found that an average of 59% orders recorded one or more violations listed in Section 20 of the RTI Act, based on which penalties were imposable”, the study said, “if this estimate of 59% is used, penalty was imposable in 99,558 cases out of the 1,68,742 cases disposed by the 20 ICs between January 1, 2016, and October 31, 2017”. However, actual penalties were imposed in only 4,083 cases or just 4.1% of the cases where they were imposable.
Stating that in 96% of the cases the offenders were being let off, the report said: “Non-imposition of penalties in deserving cases by commissions sends a signal to the public authorities that violating the law will not invite any serious consequences. This destroys the basic framework of incentives built into the RTI law and promotes a culture of impunity.”
Transparency in commissions not up to desired levels
The report also noted that transparency in the functioning of information commissions was not up to the desired level. It found the websites of the state information commissions of Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to be “inaccessible” as they displayed an error message. The website of Madhya Pradesh was found to be accessible only intermittently.
The report said an analysis of the information commission websites also revealed that many of the commissions had not posted their annual reports online. Out of the 29 commissions, it said 18 (or 62%) had not published their annual report for 2016 by the time information was sought from them in November 2017.
“Transparency is key to promoting peoples’ trust in public institutions. By failing to disclose information on their functioning, ICs continue to evade real accountability to the people of the country whom they are supposed to serve,” the report said.