NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh is the only state in the country where its information commission has not published any annual report since its inception in 2005, said a study by Transparency International (India) released on the eve of RTI Day on Friday.
The report also said governments in Punjab, Tripura and Uttarakhand also did not publish annual reports of the state information commissions for five years or more even after the SIC reports were tabled in the assemblies. By contrast, Chhattisgarh was the only state which published and put in public domain, annual reports of the SIC from 2005 to 2018, while 9 of India's 28 states, published their reports till 2017-18.
The Right to Information Act was tweaked by the government in July, granting the government powers to fix the terms and emoluments of information commissioners. The amendments also pared down the status of central and state information commissioners from being at par with the chief election commissioner and state chief secretaries, a move that was decried by transparency activists as a bid to "dilute" the transparency law.
The Transparency International report said over 3 crore RTI applications were filed since the inception of the law in 2005, while the number of appeals and complaints totalled over 21.32 lakh in the same period. Between 2005 and 2018-19, the SICs imposed penalties in 15, 578 cases on public authorities, while in the last three years, Uttarakhand Information Commission alone imposed penalRead More – Source
