Theinformationreceived from theState Information Commissionerhas suggested that as many as 1,00,433 second appeals have been filed by citizens acrossMaharashtrain 2021 in their pursuit to get the required information from the variousgovernment agencies. This is around 20% rise over the last three years (2018, 19 and 20) which saw an Average of 80,000 appeals each year. Ideally, the applicants should get information at first instance and should not even have to make the first appeal with the information officers of concerned government departments.
However, the statistics suggest that on one hand, when the purpose of theRTIAct is to combat Corruption and irregularities to benefit common citizens, unfortunately on the other hand so many second appeals are indicative of the fact that the government departments are refusing information to the applicants on a very large scale compared to earlier years.
The Information commissioners on eight benches across Maharashtra are responsible for the growing pendency as well as the refusal of information to the citizens, alleged social activist Jeetendra Ghadge, whose RTI application to the state chief information commissioner’s office has revealed that the overall pendency of appeals had risen from 32,950 in 2018 to 87,577 in 2021.