Dear all,
You may like to read media reports below on a Study of Pending Cases in CIC viz. each IC & Chief IC, for the period for year 2014 (12 Months data)
May give it wider circulation.
Best
Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd.) IN 1967
BringChangeNow
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DNA
07 January 2015
Information panel creaking under pending cases that saw 59% jump
Wednesday, 7 January 2015 - 6:00am IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: dna
dna Correspondent
It is not just the overburdened judiciary that is suffocating under pendancy. The Central Information Commission also seems to be crumbling due to the sheer number of second appeals piling up. A recent study by an activist on the performance of the CIC shows that besides increasing workload, applications about certain public authorities are also heaping up.
As per the study conducted by Delhi-based RTI activist Lokesh Batra, at the start of last year, 22,804 second appeals were pending. This jumped to 36,108 by year-end. The rise in pendancy was 13,304, that is, a cumulative leap of 59%.
These second appeals deal with a total of 718 public authorities. Of these, 80 percent were with 78 public authorities. These included the Prime Minister's Office, the HRD, defence and coal ministries, and many others. The maximum jump was seen in the number of second appeals with the Indian Air Force. The authority had a total of 21,475 cases pending by the end of 2014. The second highest number is 2,600, pending with the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan.
Appeals pending at the bench of the chief central information commissioner, a post that lies vacant in the absence of an additional charge, saw the biggest jump. From 1,992 at the beginning of 2014, it had added 9,262 appeals, totting up to 11,254 cases by year-end. In other words, pendancy bounded by 465%.
Besides not having any administrative head, the CIC also wants three commissioners to attain its intended strength. Not long ago, dna had highlighted that the pace of clearing second appeals at the CIC was below the average set by the commission.
The government, after sitting on the appointment of the chief commissioner, came out with a circular that aspirants could apply for the post in October, 2014. It is yet to sift through the 203 applications it got and appoint someone.
The same story tells itself in the case of the appointment of the three information commissioners . A circular was put out in February to appoint commissioners. A search committee in April short-listed six names for two of the posts . In July, it sought more applications. But so far, the vacancies persist.
"The problem is non-appointment and slow clearing of appeals by the commissioners. What I do not understand is that when the government can appoint CBI and IB heads within days, what takes it so long to appoint CIC and CVC heads who bring in transparency in the work of the government," said Batra.
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ePaper link below display newspaper view:
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Weblink below:
The Telegraph
Calcutta, India
| Monday , January 5 , 2015 |
Modi office sits on RTI chief selection
Ananya Sengupta
New Delhi, Jan. 4: The Central Information Commission (CIC) has been headless for the past five months, spawning an unprecedented backlog of applications and fears the delay could sound the "death knell" for transparency.
Over 200 people - other commission members and retired bureaucrats - are vying to become the chief information commissioner, according to activist Lokesh Batra who had filed a plea on the matter under the Right to Information Act (RTI).
The commission was set up under the law by the Congress-led UPA government in 2005. This is the first time it has been without a chief for so long.
All chief commissioners appointed so far have been retired government officials, as have the other 10 members. The senior-most among the 10 used to be picked as the head.
This is the first time the Centre has invited applications for the post, lying vacant since August 22, 2014, when the term of the previous incumbent, Rajiv Mathur, ended. Mathur was a former chief of the Intelligence Bureau.
The CIC chief is appointed by the President on the recommendation of a three-member selection committee headed by the Prime Minister and including the leader of the Opposition and a cabinet minister who is nominated by the Prime Minister.
"The Centre is procrastinating only on posts that will trouble the government like the CIC and the Central Vigilance Commission. How did they decide on the CBI director and the IB chief without any delay?" Batra asked.
The posts of three information commissioners are also vacant.
The activist claimed the CIC appointment process started in June, two months before Mathur's exit, but was stuck in the PMO.
"With so many cases (RTI applications), this (the delay) will be a death knell for the RTI. The DoPT (department of personnel) started the procedure in June but it is stuck with the PMO," Batra said.
The Narendra Modi government initially blamed the delay on the absence of a leader of the Opposition, although the RTI Act says the leader of the biggest political group - in this case, the Congress - should be included in the selection committee.
The Centre later advertised for the post in October and set November 24 as the last date. In an email reply to Batra, the department of personnel said the file has been pending with the PMO since August 1, 2014.
According to Batra, there are 36,251 cases pending with the CIC, with a 47 per cent increase since August.
Former chief information commissioners Wajahat Habibullah and Deepak Sandhu recently wrote to the President highlighting how the lack of a CIC head was affecting RTI implementation.
"The effective functioning of adjudicators under the RTI Act, i.e. the information commissions, is critical for the health of the transparency regime in the country. Already, there is a huge backlog with close to 25,000 appeals and complaints pending in the commission. Often, people have to wait for more than a year for their appeals and complaints to be heard. The lack of a chief information commissioner will cause the pendency to increase further," said the letter, also signed by activist Aruna Roy and former CIC commissioner Shailesh Gandhi.
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Source : Hindustan Times, New Delhi.. ePaper dated 05 January 2014
Hindustan Times
Monday, January 05, 2015
RTI becomes ineffective as pending cases on the rise
FUTILE Govt yet to appoint Central Information Commissioner, number of pending cases in transparency watchdog rises to 60%
Chetan Chauhan
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NEW DELHI: With the number of pending cases with both the Central Information Commission and the public authorities on the rise, the citizen's right to infor mation is heading for slow burial. This comes even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emphasised on transparency in governance.
With the government not been able to appoint the Central Information Commissioner for the last five months, the pendency of the cases in the transparency watchdog has risen by over 60% in a year. The number of pending appeals against the prime minister's office and the President's House has witnessed a fivefold increase in absence of the CIC.
The huge jump is also result of the slow rate of clearing appeals by other information commissioners. The data shows that the commissioners have failed to meet the CIC's own norm of clearing at least 3,000 cases in a year. The cases pending with the information commissioners were more than 4,000 except those who were appointed in 2014.
"If you see the data, the number of appeals cleared has been less than the norm. The slow rate is making RTI ineffective as public authorities are not concerned about providing information because it was taking a very long time in appeals been heard," said former infor mation commissioner Shailesh Gandhi.
In the beginning of 2015, there were over 36,000 pending appeals and complaints with the CIC. The number had increased by over 12,000 in a year and the prime reason for the same was slow pace of hearing appeals, shows a reply by CIC to RTI activist Lokesh Batra.
About one-third of the pending appeals and complaints are listed against the name of Chief Information Commissioner, whose post fell vacant on August 22. A reply to an RTI application showed that the Prime Minister's Office sat on the file about appointment of the new CIC for almost three years before the department of personnel and training initiated the process for appointing the new CIC.
If one goes by ministry-wise list, the maximum number pending appeals were against the key ministries of Defence, railways, posts and human resource development. On the fifth position was Delhi government with over 1,200 appeals pending.
RTI activists had termed the delay in appointment of the CIC as a move to kill the people centric Right To Information Act.
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THE HINDU
New Delhi, January 4, 2015
Updated: January 4, 2015 20:15 IST
36000 RTI queries pending as CIC remains headless
Mahim Pratap Singh
At a time when transparency and access to information have emerged as prerequisites of good governance, there are over 36000 pending Right to Information (RTI) queries pending at the Central Information Commission (CIC), which has been functioning without a Chief Information Commissioner for almost four months now.
According to information furnished by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), 203 people, including all seven serving Information Commissioners and a former DoPT secretary, have applied for the top post, lying vacant since 22nd August.
The information was provided to Commodore (retired) Lokesh Batra in response to a RTI query.
The query also revealed that the number of pending cases in the CIC bench increased by 47 per cent, from 7655 to 11212, in the four months since the retirement of the last CIC Rajiv Mathur.
The government had invited applications for the post of CIC on 24th October. The last date for application was 23rd November.
As on January 4th, there were 36,319 pending cases before the Central Information Commission. The bulk of these — 28,888 to be precise — were appeals while the rest (7,431) were complaints.
According to the monthly progress reports put up by the CIC on its website, Vijay Sharma, at 5971, had the most pending cases (complaints and appeals) among the seven information commissioners, followed by Yashovardhan Azad at 4902 and Sharat Sabharwal at 3999.
Manjula Prasher, the only woman member of the commission, had 3418 pending cases while Basant Seth, MA Khan Yusufi, and M.S. Acharyulu had 3408, 1491 and 1772 pending cases, respectively.
When it came to disposing off applications in 2014, Mr. Acharyulu was at the top with resolution of 2891 RTI applications.
He was followed by Mr. Sharma at 2660, Mr. Seth at 2351, Mr. Azad at 2202, Mr. Sabharwal at 2183, Ms. Prasher at 2036 and Mr. Yusufi at 1713.
For the Chief Information Commissioner, the monthly progress reports shows zero cases disposed against 11317 pending complaints for the entire last year, which is interesting considering CIC Rajiv Mathur held the post till August 2014, after which it fell vacant.
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NOTE : There are more media stories on the web.
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Posted by: Lokesh Batra <batra_lokesh@yahoo.com>
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