CBI annual report yet to be put on website

Departing from the tradition of bringing Annual Reports in public domain, CBI is yet to place its last year's report on the agency website.

Putting the annual report, a public document, on its website was the agency's initiative to open itself to the public and give details of its functioning including registration of cases, their summary and also preliminary enquiries.

The website of the agency had displayed the annual reports from the years 2009 onwards till 2013. The report of 2014 has been prepared but not been posted on the website even now, sources said.

A query sent to Joint Director (Policy) R S Bhatti, who handles the department maintaining the website and all policy related matters, remained unanswered.

The posting of annual reports was an initiative of the then Director A P Singh, who favoured transparency in the functioning of the agency. The tradition continued during the time of his successor Ranjit Sinha.

The posting of annual reports on the website of the agency have also been cited by RTI activists to make case for disclosing information by the agency under the transparency law as despite being exempted under the law, it is bound to disclose information related to allegations of corruption.

The agency had contested the orders of the CIC asking it to disclose information related to corruption case.

Former Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra had clarified that wording of exemption clause saying it casts an obligation on CPIO of the exempted organisation to entertain all requests of information pertaining to allegations of corruption or human rights violations.

"It does not make any distinction between the exempted organisations on the basis of the functions they perform nor between allegations of corruption on the basis of whether it is made against the employees of the exempted organisations or against others," he had said.