Over 4 lakh complaints and appeals pending before Information Commissions; Karnataka alone has pendency of over 50,000 cases

New Delhi: Karnataka State Information Commission is headless for the past few months while seven of the ten posts of Information Commissioners remain vacant at a time transparency panel has a pendency of over 50,000 complaints and appeals, a study of transparency regime in the country showed.

With the Right to Information (RTI) regime completing 19 years of its existence on Saturday, the ‘Report Card on the Performance of Information Commissions in India 2023-24’ showed that four State Information Commissions are completely defunct while another five are headless when the pendency rate has risen from 3.21 lakh a year ago to 4.05 lakh.

The RTI Bill, which was passed by Parliament on 15 June, 2005, came into force on 12 October, 2005.

The report by ‘Satark Nagarik Sangathan’ showed that the Karnataka SIC does not have a Chief Information Commissioner since May 2024 while eight posts, including the head, are vacant. Karnataka SIC website showed that Information Commissioner H C Sathyan has been given charge of CIC.

It said no new appointments have been made since April 2022 though seven commissioners have demitted office following completion of their tenure since then. In February 2019 itself, the Supreme Court had directed the Karnataka government to ensure that the SIC functions at full strength of 11 Commissioners.

The vacancies comes at a time the pendency in Karnataka SIC has risen from 41,047 in last October to 50,277 as on September 10. Karnataka is second only to Maharashtra (1.08 lakh) when it comes to pendency.

Between 1 July, 2023 and 30 June, 2024, Karnataka CIC received 24,014 complaints and appeals and disposed of 28,630, including pending ones. At this rate, the report said, Karnataka SIC would take one year and nine months to dispose of an appeal.

“Unfortunately, 19 years after the RTI Act was implemented, experience in India suggests that the functioning of information commissions is a major bottleneck in the effective implementation of the RTI law,” Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri of SNS said.

Across India, the pendency in Central Information Commission and 28 SICs is pegged at 4.05 lakh at a time SICs in Jharkhand, Telangana, Goa and Tripura are completely defunct. Of this, Jharkhand has been defunct since May 2020, Tripura since July 2021, Telangana February 2023 and Goa since March this year.

The SIC in Madhya Pradesh was defunct for around six months till September while UP was non-functional for three weeks and Chhattisgarh five days earlier this year. Along with Karnataka, SICs in Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Odisha are headless.

When it comes to vacancies, the CIC is working with a chief and two Information Commissioners while there are eight vacancies for eight. In Maharashtra, there are six vacancies while there are six in Tamil Nadu.

“Large backlog of appeals and complaints in many commissions across the country have resulted in inordinate delays in disposal of cases, which render the law ineffective. One of the primary reasons for the backlogs is the failure of central and state governments to take timely action to appoint information commissions to the CIC and SICs, respectively,” the report said.