RTI rejections down for the govt, but rise for home ministry: CIC report

RTI rejection down 4.3% overall, home ministry rejects 21% of RTI requests, finance rejects 13%

Although India has slipped two positions to the sixth rank in global RTI ratings released by Access info and Centre for Law and Democracy—it was ranked fourth in 2016—the Central Information Commission’s latest annual report shows that statistics are improving with a fall in the rejection rate.

The report released last week for 2019-20 shows that the rejection rate of applications in the country fell for a sixth consecutive year to 4.3%. So, of the over 1.3 million RTI requests received in 2019-20, only 58,634 were rejected. In contrast, in 2014-15, of the 755,247 requests received, 63,351 or 8.4% were rejected.
 

However, the report also shows that the number of RTI requests have been piling up in the last few years. While there were 89,785 applications that remained unaddressed by 2014-15, this rose to 188,538 in 2015-16. This, as per the CIC report, has further increased to 310,110. Meanwhile, CIC’s average rate of answering requests has been 72-73%.

The real worry is that despite a falling rate of rejection, some of the key ministries witnessed a rise in rejection rate in 2019-20.

While the rejection rate fell from 20.2% in 2014-15 to 12.48% for the ministry of finance in 2019-20, it rose from 13.9% to 20.46% for the home ministry. Most of the rejections within the home ministry came on account of non-disclosure of information with regards to the intelligence bureau, CISF and other paramilitary forces.
 

However, a cause of concern is the rise in rejections under the Others category. Usually, the department either invokes Section 8(1), Section 9, Section 11 or Section 24 of the RTI Act while rejecting a request. However, data from the report shows that more requests were rejected under the Others category, which leaves the door open for ambiguity. Rejections invoking the Others category rose from 33% in 2018-19 to 39% in 2019-20.

There was also a marginal increase in first appeals, usually filed based on an unsatisfactory response from the concerned authority under Section 19(1) of the RTO Act, 2005, compared to last year. However, the number of first appeals have been rising during the previous six years. A total of 152,354 appeals were filed in 2019-20, whereas, in 2014-15, the number of appeals filed were 110,095.

The number of requests converted into first appeals for the home ministry increased to 16.5%, as compared to 12.8% in 2018-19 and 12.4% in 2017-18.

In 2019, the government had amended the RTI Act to exercise greater control over the appointment and remuneration of information commissioners both at the central and state level. Many had termed this as a dilution of the Act.