It is 15 years since the Right to Information Act was introduced as another piece of legislation, only to cheat the masses once again. Touted as a sunshine act, as a panacea for corruption and introduce accountability of the public servants to the public, it has grown into one of the biggest, yet unrecognized, scams over the last 15 years.

1. RTIGATE-A 15 YEAR OLD SCAM
P M Ravindran, raviforjustice@gmail.com
It is 15 years since the Right to Information Act was introduced as another piece of
legislation, only to cheat the masses once again. Touted as a sunshine act, as a panacea for
corruption and introduce accountability of the public servants to the public, it has grown
into one of the biggest, yet unrecognized, scams over the last 15 years.
Before we proceed further, let us do some back of envelope calculations.
Each information commission is authorized one Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) and a
maximum of 10 Information Commissioners (ICs). There is the Central Information
Commission (Central IC) and 29 state information commissions (SICs) with say, an average
of 6 ICs, including the CIC. That makes the total number of ICs, including the CICs, as 180.
Each information commissioner can dispose of, say, a very conservative 10 appeals per
working day and there are 220 working days per year, then each IC is expected to clear 2200
appeals in a year. So, between all the ICs, in 15 years the number of appeals disposed of
should be around 59,40,000.
The RTI Act provides for imposing a penalty @ Rs 250/- per day of delay in providing the
information sought, subject to a maximum of Rs 25000/- on a defaulting Public Information
Officer (PIO). Presuming that no appeal would have been filed unless there had been
shortfalls in providing the complete information sought and that by the time an appeal is
disposed of by an IC this maximum limit would have been reached the total penalty due
would be a whopping Rs 148,500,000,000 (14,850 Cr).
Now consider the average cost, just in terms of his/her pay and perks only, to exchequer of
an IC to be around Rs 3 lakhs per month till 7th Central Pay Commission and 5 lakhs per
month since 01 Jan 2016. That would be Rs 11,880,000,000 (1,188 Cr).
To my mind the total of the above figures, that is Rs 16,038 Crores is the total loss to the
exchequer over the last 15 years. This does not include the cost of the establishment, that is
the fixed and movable assets, the salary and allowances of the other employees,
consumables etc.
Do I mean that all the 2nd appeals were deserving the full penalty to be imposed? Yes, of
course. Given that even in cases of decisions directing the defaulting Public Information
Officers to provide information, the ICs have been delinquent in penalizing them shows the
extent of arbitrariness, waywardness and corruption involved.
I, along with 12 activists, were put in the dock when we staged a protest outside the venue
where the then CIC of Kerala SIC was to address a seminar on RTI. Obviously, the detention
and prosecution were illegal and misuse of the authority by the police at the behest of the
CIC. That aside, demands of the protesters were for the information commissions to stop:
- denial of democratic rights of citizens
- violation of laws
- corruption
- extravaganza

2. The issues highlighted included:
All public authorities including the Information Commission should disclose information as
required by Sec 4(1)(b)
Collect the penalty prescribed by law for the delay in publishing the information
Dispose of the complaints and appeals received by the Commission in a time bound manner
as prescribed by the law
Stop the misinformation being disseminated by the Commission
The Commission which has an air conditioned office, computers, luxury cars and more than
the required number of employees should not claim that it has no facilities (the 4
commissioners who need 15 employees have 35, of the 1263 cases filed in the Commission
between January 2006 and May 2007 only 649 have been disposed of, and the amount
spent by the Commission during this period was Rs 2.5 crores of the tax payers’ money)
Stop spreading lies like some people are threatening the government employees in the
name of the RTI Act
Isn’t the scope for misusing the law available only for the information commissioners? For
example, to accept a bribe of Rs 15000/- from a defaulting public servant who should be
penalized with Rs 25000/- and fail to penalize him is available only to the information
commissioners.
The copy of the leaflet, in Malayalam, distributed during the protest on 18 Dec 2007, along
with its translation in English, is available at
https://www.slideshare.net/raviforjustice/rti-protest181207leafletmal-n-eng.
Horror of horrors, the situation has only gone from bad to worse over the years.
To elucidate further, even the information commissions have not complied with the
mandated suo moto disclosures listed in Sec 4(1)(b).
At their website, http://keralasic.gov.in/, under Right to Information, Kerala SIC has only
provided the details of their PIO and their First Appellate Authority (FAA).
Under Disclosures, there is a Menu where the 1st option is Disclosure u/s 4(1)(b). Here what
has been provided is a list under the heading Private Journey Payment (for the period 2011
June to 2014 July).
The Central IC, which had correctly disclosed this information, sub section wise, at their
website in the early years, has now disclosed only partial information. For example, the
details of employees and their monthly remuneration have not been disclosed as required
by Sec 4(1)(b)(ix) and Sec 4(1)(b)(x) of the RTI Act. What has been left out is the exact
number of employees in each category. And instead of the exact remuneration being given,
only the levels as per the 7th Central Pay Commission scales have been provided.
While the Act has provided mandatory time frames for the PIOs and FAAs to reply and for
the applicant to file appeals, it has not provided any time frame for the ICs to dispose of the
appeals (as well as complaints) submitted to them. But there is a provision, and only one

3. provision to Sec 7(1), which prescribes a priority for providing information. It says: where
the information sought for concerns the life or liberty of a person, the same shall be
provided within forty-eight hours of the receipt of the request. By extension, it follows that
the appeals, including the 2nd appeal, must be disposed of within 48 hours each. And, in the
rest it must be on first come, first served basis. But even that is violated, as will be evident
when I present data on disposal of cases.
Regarding disposal of cases, under the option ‘Orders’ in the main menu, the Kerala SIC has
provided the information at its website under different years from 2010 to 2019 and
another option ‘Orders in English’.
As on 30 Jul 2019, for 2019, the orders have been provided against various ICs as follows:
Vinson M Paul, CIC (For January to April 2019):
He had disposed of 312 cases between January and March 2019. And 32 in April 2019. To
understand the arbitrary and wayward (not on first come first served basis) manner of
disposal, the April data was analyzed, to co-relate the year, in which the application was
originally submitted, with the appeals and complaints disposed of in that month. The result
is:
2nd appeal : 2012-3, 2013-9, 2018-10, 2019-1, Total- 23
Complaints : 2013-2, 2014-1, 2018-1, 2019-5, Total- 09
The following are deficiencies noted in the above data made available:
- Information about the disposals since May 2019 is not available.
- The orders/decisions, themselves are not accessible in all cases. While the orders up
to March 2019 appears as hyperlinks, for April 2019 it is just a list. But even in some
random cases of these hyperlinks I have checked from the January list, some have
returned the message ‘Forbidden. You don't have permission to access
/images/stories/sic/decisions/orders2019/cic/ on this server.’
- The orders have been uploaded in Word format and not Portable Document Format
(PDF) and hence cannot be read unless the same fonts are installed in your system.
This problem does not arise with PDF.
If this be the case of the CIC, the data about other ICs is even more shocking.
Vivekanandan,IC (Available for 2018 only.)
2nd appeal : 2016-6, 2017-5, 2018-2, Total- 13
Complaints : 2013-6, 2014-2, 2017-3, Total- 11
Somanathan Pillai, IC (Available for 2019 only, not month wise but separately for Malayalam
and English. The figures given below includes both)
2nd appeal : 2010-1, 11-1, 12-1, 13-4, 14-13, 16-1, 17-2, 18-14, 19-7, Total- 44
Complaints : 2010-6, 15-1, 17-3, 18-2, 19-3, Total- 15
Sudhakaran, IC (Available for 2019 only.)
2nd appeal : 2015-8, 16-1, 17-3, 18-4, Total- 16
Complaints : C: 2015-1, 18-1 Total- 02

4. Sreelatha, IC (For January and Feb 2019 only.)
2nd appeal : 2015-3, 17-5, 18-4, Total- 12
Complaints : 2017-8, 18-3, Total- 11
While Sudhakaran’s list of cases disposed have hyperlinks to the orders/decisions which are
in PDF the list of cases disposed of by the others are just that, mere lists with no access to
the decisions themselves.
It may be noted that while the figures about disposal do convey the casual approach of the
ICs, the perusal of the orders themselves would reveal the preposterous nature of the
decisions. When the decisions are devoid of reasons the least that should be obvious should
be the dereliction of duty and/or incompetence of the CIC. If anybody suspects corruption,
they cannot also be blamed.
Another piece of information available at the website is that of the expenditure incurred by
the Commission annually, for the period from 2005-06 to 2013-14. It has steadily increased
from Rs 1.0127 Cr to 2.9474 Cr. No need to ask: what about the expenditures thereafter?
As per a list, updated on 11/10/2018, of 664 penalties imposed by the Commission, the first
penalty, of Rs 3500/- was imposed by the Commission on 08/01/2007. The last, Rs 1000/-
was imposed on 18/07/2018.
The total penalty imposed, as per the summary provided is: Rs 44,51,815/-; the total received
is only Rs 28,56,353/- and the High Court, Kerala has stayed penalties totaling Rs 4,88,387/-. Again,
no questions on the missing Rs 11,06,893/-.
Now, when penalized PIOs take up the matter with high courts they are required to do so in
their own personal capacity. This is not only logically correct but has been held so by Punjab
and Haryana High Court as per a report in the Indian Express, datelined 04 Nov 2010.
Since, the Information Commission must be a respondent in such cases, do the commissions
keep a record of such cases? At least the Kerala SIC does not.
This is in violation of Sec 4(1)(a) of the RTI Act which mandates that ‘Every public authority
shall maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and the form which
facilitates the right to information under this Act.
In a similar issue, of maintaining a register to track compliance of their decisions, the
Central IC had decided that a Register of Non Compliance will be opened, which will be processed
by the Office of Secretary, CIC and on conclusion of the complaint, the complaint will either be closed
or registered as a complaint for hearing under the appropriate sub sec. of Sec. 18(1) and proceeded
upon by the Bench of the Information Commissioner concerned. (Refer decision dated 11/06/2009 in
Commission in their case file no. CIC/WB/C/2008/00859.)
In a 5-part series on the subject ‘RTI: Exposing the traitors among public servants’ published
here between 27 and 31 Mar 2018 the details of the RTI Act including its shortcomings, the
lapses in implementation and the way forward had been analyzed.
Please read them at
http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4626

5. http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4627
http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4628
http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4629
http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4630
There is one small but major change that has happened since then.
Through an amendment to the Act, published in the Gazette on 01 August 2019 and the
rules published thereunder on 24 Oct 2019, the tenure and pay of the ICs, including the CICs
have been changed.
Essentially, the tenure of all these public servants have been reduced to 3 years from 5 years.
The pay of the CIC of the Central IC has been reduced to Rs 2,50,000. Earlier it had been the
same as that of the Chief Election Commissioner.
The pay of the ICs of the Central IC has been reduced to Rs 2,25,000. Earlier it had been the
same as that of the Election Commissioner.
The pay of the CICs and ICs of the SICs have been fixed at Rs 2,25,000/-. Earlier it had been
the same as that of an Election Commissioner and Chief Secretary to the State Government,
respectively.
I have been maintaining that the job of an IC is simpler than that of a munsif in our judiciary.
Hence even this level of pay is an avoidable drain on the exchequer.
But there has been severe criticism of this amendment from many RTI activists themselves.
For example, Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, has
commented in the Economic Times of 25 Oct 2019 (Govt notifies RTI rules; CIC tenure cut to
3 yrs, govt to decide salary, other perks) that ‘As the parity between the Information
Commissions and the Election Commission of India has been downgraded to babu-level, it is
highly unlikely that in a situation where the rule of law is not a very strongly embedded
value in the bureaucracy, that senior babus in the administration will ever be hauled up
before the Information Commissions for not complying with the provisions of the RTI Act’. Of
course, everyone has a right to his opinion. But he seems to have forgotten that even P V
Narasimha Rao, as the Prime Minister of this nation then, had been doing the rounds of trial
courts at least in three cases in which he had been an accused- the Lakhubhai Pathak case,
the JMM bribery case and the St Kitts case. (The analysis of these cases is itself an
interesting study, but for a later occasion.)
Another report in the Print dated 21 May 2020 ( 21 of 29 state information commissions did
not hold any RTI hearings during lockdown) The study by voluntary groups Satark Nagrik
Sangathan and Centre for Equity Studies stated that only the Central IC and the SICs of
Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Manipur, Punjab and Telangana had made provisions for
taking up urgent matters or those related to life and liberty during the period. But then
wasn’t the apex court itself among the first to decide that it was a non-essential service
during the lockdown?
05 Aug 2020.