RTI report card highlights overwhelming presence of retired govt officials as information commissioners

NEW DELHI: A ‘report card’ on the working of information commissions under the Right To Information Act shows that 57% of the approximately 510 commissioners for whom background information was available were retired govt officials.

Nearly 15% information commissioners were lawyers or former judges (11% were advocates or from the judicial service and 4% were retired judges), 12% commissioners had a background in journalism, 5% were academics (teachers, professors) and 4% were social activists or workers.

The report highlights that despite the RTI Act providing that commissioners can be appointed from diverse backgrounds and fields — this being reiterated by the Supreme Court in its Feb 2019 judgment— the assessment found that a majority of information commissioners have been appointed from among retired govt servants.

“Of the 148 chief information commissioners for whom data was obtained, an overwhelming 85% were retired govt servants. 9% had a background in law (4% former judges and 5% lawyers or judicial officers),” the report stated.

This data is part of voluntary organisation Satark Nagrik Sangathan ’s ‘Report Card of Information Commissions, 2023-24’. It looks at the performance of all 29 information commissions in the country for the period July 2023 till June 2024, based on responses received to their RTI questions from the commissions.

The report card brought out each year yet again brings into focus a worrisome concern as the gender composition of commissions continues to be extremely skewed. Since the passage of the RTI Act in 2005, merely 9% of all information commissioners across the country have been women. Nine ICs have never ever had a woman commissioner since they were constituted. These states include Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Telangana, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

Among chief information commissioners, the gender parity is even worse, with only 5% chiefs ever being women. As on Oct 12, 2024, none of the information commissions was headed by a woman.

Meanwhile, data shows that the average disposal of appeals and complaints per commissioner, calculated using data for the period July 2023 to June 2024, shows wide variation across commissions. For instance Maharashtra information commission had the highest annual average disposal rate of 13,062 appeals/complaints per commissioner and SIC of Andhra Pradesh had an annual average disposal rate of 1,141 cases per commissioner - each commissioner on an average effectively disposing less than five cases a day - even though more than 10,000 cases were pending.

The report also brings into focus how many ICs were found to be returning a very large number of cases without passing any orders. For instance, the Central Information Commission returned nearly 14,000 appeals/complaints while it registered 19,347 during the period under review.

As many as 2,31,417 appeals and complaints were registered between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024 by 27 information commissions. During the same time period, 2,25,929 cases were disposed by 28 commissions. The number of appeals and complaints pending on June 30, 2024 in the 29 information commissions, stood at 4,05,509.