With 1.9 Lakh Cases Pending, You May Have To Wait For 30 Years For Your RTI Appeal To Be Heard

If you file a query under the Right to Information (RTI) Act in Assam today, you might have to wait 30 years for your appeal to be heard by the information commissioner (IC). The "waiting period" in West Bengal is over 11 years and seven in Kerala.

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A study of the working of information commissions in 16 states shows that the RTI Act's purpose of ensuring greater transparency is being throttled by the sheer pendency of cases ¡ª 1.87 lakh as on December 2015.

The study by Research, Assessment and Analysis Group (RaaG) and Satark Nagrik Sangathan, on the working of 16 information commissions and Supreme Court and high courts, reveals that the number of RTI appeals pending has seen a whopping increase ranging between 40 and 240% in two years.

Though the Act empowers the ICs to impose penalties of up to Rs 25,000 on erring public information officers for violations, penalties have been imposed in only 1.3% of the cases in the 16 states, causing a potential loss of Rs 290 crore in fines defaulting public authorities would have paid.

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Despite an increase in the number of ICs in the Central Information Commission, pendency has increased from 13 months to 22 months.

A study of the performance of information commissioners is being carried out by the Research Assessment and Analysis Group and Satark Nagrik Sangathan. The key findings don't bode well when it comes to implementing the RTI Act as matters have worsened since the last RTI study in 2014.

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The waiting time in the Assam IC, which was two years eight months in 2014, has now shot up to 30 years. West Bengal has improved its pendency, cutting the waiting time down from 17 years 3 months to 11 years and 3 months. But Kerala fares badly, with the waiting time increasing to seven years four months from two years three months in 2014.