Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Apr 28: In the ten-year history of “Right to Information Act (RTI) 2005”, Modi Government is the first to show courage and conviction to fill all the 10 posts of Information Commissioners in the Central Information Commission (CIC), which is an evidence of the Government’s commitment to transparency in governance and administration.
This was stated here today by Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh while speaking in the Rajya Sabha, in response to a question regarding Central Information Commission and RTI as well as various steps taken by the government to strengthen the procedures under these institutions.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, ever since the RTI was introduced in 2005, there has not been a single occasion when the Central Information Commission had its full strength of 10 members which is also an important factor responsible for the huge cumulative pendency which was there when the present Government took over nearly two years ago. There have also been occasions during the earlier regime, he said, when the 10 member Central Information Commission had as few as only 4 members as Information Commissioners. The Modi Government can, therefore, duly claim credit for having filled all the 10 posts and thus reiterated its commitment to the citizens’ right to information, he added.
In response to a supplementary query, Dr Jitendra Singh said, the number of RTIs has also been come done by as much as nearly 79,000 and claimed that, this is because now, more and more public authorities are placing information suo-moto in public domain. Not only this, he said, when the present Government took over, the online facility to file RTI was only available in English language while we went ahead to make it available even in Hindi to make it accessible to a larger section of population. Similarly, the number of public authorities available online was just about 100 which has in the last 23 months increased to around 493, he said.
Not only this, Dr Jitendra Singh said, the Grievance Cell under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, has become pro-active and even during one week ending yesterday, in the five working days, the disposal of grievances was 84% , and he personally calls up, on telephone, some of the complainant citizens at random, to verify their level of satisfaction. Another heartening feature, he said, is that the number of grievances being filed per year has increased from 2 lakh per year in the last regime to over 6 lakh per year during the last two years because more and more number of citizens are feeling encouraged to register their grievances because of the confidence that their grievance will be suitably and satisfactorily addressed.
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