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NEWS ALERTS | Pending cases in CIC pile up by 32 percent
Pending cases in CIC pile up by 32 percent

Pending cases in CIC pile up by 32 percent

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published Published on May 29, 2015   modified Modified on May 6, 2016
Due to delay in the appointment of Chief Information Commissioner, the number of pending cases at the Central Information Commission (CIC) have gone up by nearly 1/3rd during the last 9 months.

As per information furnished by the website of CIC (accessed on 29 May, 2015), the number of pending cases for disposal was 29,937 as on 22 August 2014, which after 9 months increased to 39,464 as on 22 May, 2015. (Please check the first link below). It must be mentioned here that the last Chief Information Commissioner  Rajiv Mathur's term ended on 22 August, 2014.

On 22 May, 2015 the number of RTI related pending complaints as per the CIC website (accessed on 29 May, 2015) was 7,409, whereas the number of pending appeals was 32,055. On the day the last Chief Information Commissioner left his post, the number of pending complaints was 6,868 and the number of pending appeals was 23,069.

In the meanwhile, the other Information Commissioners at the CIC are dealing with those pending cases, which used to be previously handled by the Chief Information Commissioner prior to September 2014.

It is worth noting that applications for the post of the Chief Information Commissioner were invited by the Central Government in October last year. Despite this, the post of the head at CIC has been lying vacant since the last 7 months. Various civil society organizations and individuals had filed RTI applications so as to know the reasons behind the delay in appointment of the Chief Information Commissioner. In one reply, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said that the appointment related file has been with the PMO for final decision since 1 August, 2014.

As per provisions, for the appointment of Chief Information Commissioner, a High level Search Committee is required to provide a list of possible candidates to the Appointment Committee. In order to know what the Search Committee has done so far, activists from the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) filed RTI applications in the past. In its reply, the DoPT said that in connection to the appointment of the Chief Information Commissioner, two meetings of the Search Committee had taken place in the months of January and February in 2015 but the minutes/details of the meetings were not provided in the RTI reply.

After 15 years of struggle by civil society organizations, NGOs and activists, the RTI law was finally enacted in 2005 under the UPA rule. This year the 10th anniversary of the RTI legislation is being celebrated in the backdrop of a headless CIC. While evaluating the implementation of transparency law in India, the report entitled People's Monitoring of the RTI Regime in India 2011-13 (published in October 2014) finds that delays in the appointment of Information Commissioners have been a major stumbling block, which hampers timely disposal of RTI related cases.


References:

Website of Central Information Commission (accessed on 29 May, 2015), http://cic.gov.in/

List of Former Chief Information Commissioners  &  Information Commissioners, http://cic.gov.in/Former-ICs.htm

NCPRI launches ‘Use RTI to Save RTI’ campaign, 21 October, 2014 (please click here to access)

Online Petition: Appoint Chief Information Commissioner in the Central Information Commission (please click here to access)

FAQs on Information Commissions, http://cic.gov.in/information_commissions.htm

People's Monitoring of the RTI Regime in India 2011-13 (published in October 2014), prepared by RTI Assessment and Advocacy Group (RaaG) and Samya -Centre for Equity Studies (CES) (please click here to access)

Information Commissions and the Use of RTI Laws in India 2014 (Rapid Study 2.0) done by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), published in July 2014 (please click here to access)

Death by Neglect, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-L, No. 20, May 16, 2015 (please click here to access)
 
No decision yet on appointment of CVC, CIC, The Hindu, 23 May, 2015 (please click here to access)

RTI is being sabotaged by not allocating enough resources to make it work -Shailesh Gandhi, The Times of India Blog, 19 May, 2015,

If we hobble Right to Information, then we hobble India’s democracy -Sanjoy Narayan, Hindustan Times, 17 March, 2015

What has ten years of RTI achieved? -Pamela Philipose, The Tribune, 21 January, 2015

Modi office sits on RTI chief selection -Ananya Sengupta, The Telegraph, 5 January, 2015

With no CIC, RTI appeals pile up -Rukmini S, The Hindu, 25 November, 2014

CIC autonomy gets dented due to missing chief -Aloke Tikku, The Hindustan Times, 17 October, 2014
 
How to Appoint a New Indian Chief Information Commissioner -Shailesh Gandhi, 28 August, 2014, FreedomInfo.org  


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