Right to Information Act, 2005

• According to statistics collated by the Central Information Commission (CIC), the final appellate authority under RTI Act, 94 per cent of the public authorities have reported in 2015-16 on how they have been implementing the RTI Act.
• This is the first time that the number of public authorities following the rulebook has crossed the 90 per cent mark.
• Every year, a department has to register itself with the CIC and submit four quarterly returns during a year for assessment of their performance These returns include the number of applications received, disposed of, applications rejected, grounds of rejection, number of first appeals filed and the pendency at each ministry. This reflects on the efficacy of the RTI system in the government. So far, the number of ministries which have reported on the implementation has declined steadily.
• In the first year of the implementation of RTI Act 2005-06, the most number of public authorities had reported their implementation figures. In that year, 89.23% of the public authorities had submitted the statistics.
• This has declined to an all-time low of 67.5% in 2010-11. It became a shade better last year when 75.27% of the ministries and departments submitted their quarterly return.
• The number increased after concerted efforts by the CIC, which put in place a system to ensure all public authorities registered and reported their statistics. A follow-up was done every month.

Analysis:

• The history of the RTI Act goes back to the enactment of Freedom of Information Act, 2002, whose objective was to promote transparency and accountability. Because the government wanted the act to be made more effective, it was repealed and the Right to Information Bill, 2004 was passed by the Parliament in May, 2005.
• This received the president's assent on 15 June, 2005. Since then, the RTI Act has been used to fight corruption and has exposed deep-rooted graft in India. For example, the RTI applications filed by activists exposed the infamous Adarsh Housing society scam, 2 G scam, commonwealth games scam etc.
• In 2008, an RTI application by a Punjab-based NGO revealed that heads of the local branches of the Indian Red Cross Society had used money intended for the victims of the Kargil war and natural disasters to buy cars, air-conditioners and pay for hotel bills.
• However, there are some problems with the RTI Act, the most important one being that the huge number of RTI queries filed makes it difficult for public authorities to respond to them in a timely manner. A 2014 study conducted by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) revealed that over 1.75 crore RTI applications have been filed from 2005 to July 2014.
• According to this report, there has also been a ten-fold increase in the number of RTI applications to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) between 2006-07 and 2014-15. Add to this the fact that a lot of the RTI queries filed are frivolous and we have a real problem.
   

By: Vishal