Now, track status of pending RTI cases on CIC website

Appellants will know the reason of delay; CIC to take cases of senior citizens, disabled on priority.

Updated on: Jan 16, 2012, 24:40:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Appellants in quasi-judicial bodies normally find it difficult to track the status of their applications. The Central Information Commission has found a way out to help appellants track status of their applications.

The transparency watchdog has decided to list status of all pending cases on its website to help the applicants find the reasons for why their appeal was not taken up while those of others were considered.

There had been instances when RTI applicants had complained that their appeals have not been considered for more than two years even though the CIC had resolved a period of 90 days from filing of application to taking up the appeal.

Last year, an RTI appellant filed a compliant with Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi, who found that his office had failed to take some of the appeals that were filed more than a year ago.

“It may have happened because of sheer inefficiency or over-sight in office,” said Gandhi, who decides most number of appeals among information commissioners in the CIC.

An RTI applicant Rajesh Garg expressed his unhappiness, saying many times, appeals get misplaced in the commission and the applicant has no clue about it till the applicant conducts personal enquiries about the appeal.

It was then that Gandhi decided to prepare a status report of the appeals filed with his office and found that many appeals have been erroneously missed. Gandhi took up the older cases on priority and started disposing them off.

The issue was discussed at the last meeting of the information commission where it was resolved that all information commissioners will prepare a status reporting on pending appeals and place it on the CIC’s website.

To start with, Gandhi and Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra had put the status report and others are expected to follow suit.

The CIC is apparently the first quasi-judicial body to list the status of pending cases and Gandhi believes that it would prompt the state information commissions to adopt the practise.

There is also some good news for the senior citizens and the disabled. The CIC has decided to take up their cases on priority and give reasons for doing the same. The office of each information commissioner has been instructed to place their cases for consideration.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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