Tamil Nadu Information Commission Lowest Performing in RTI Responsiveness

Tamil Nadu Information Commission Lowest Performing in RTI Responsiveness: With just up to 14% of the information requested, the State Information Commission of Tamil Nadu has the worst performance of responsiveness under the RTI Act. Maharashtra was second lowest with sharing only 23% of the information asked for.

The report was issued on the Performance of Information Commission (ICs) in India for 2021-22 by Satark Nagrik Sangathan.

January 2023 Current Affairs Quiz

Tamil Nadu Information Commission Lowest Performing in RTI Responsiveness – Key Points

• Only 10 ICs provided the full information in response to the RTI applications filed as part of this assessment.
• These comprised the northeastern states of Tripura, Nagaland, and Sikkim as well as the states of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, and Jharkhand.
• A total of 145 RTI applications were filed seeking identical information from all the 29 ICs as a part of the assessment by the organization.
• The RTI applications were tracked to assess how each IC performed as a public authority in terms of maintenance and disclosing information.
• Tamil Nadu was the worst performing IC as it denied most of the information sought.
• They denied the information sought including several appeals and complaints dealt with the IC, details of the penalty imposed, and compensation awarded stating that the information could be provided only ‘after getting the approval of State Legislature Assembly’, though no such provision exists in the RTI Act.
• The SIC of Chhattisgarh denied the information on several points stating that under the prevailing state rule, in one application information on only one topic could be sought.
• The Bihar SIC improved its performance and provided 67% of the information requested after failing to give any information under the RTI Act for the assessments released in 2020 and 2021.
• The report also said that a large number of ICs across the country were returning cases without passing orders.
• Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh returned around 40% of the appeals or complaints received by them.