| Despite barely 55 cases in hand, SIC still goes slow | | | et plus report
Jammu, Mar 15: Jammu and Kashmir State Information Commission (SIC) in a written reply to an RTI application has informed that as on 05/March/2013 there are only 55 cases of appeals and complaints pending or under process before the State Information Commission.
However, the Public Information Officer (PIO) of the Commission, vide his office letter no SIC/PIO/CO/09/2013/1086 dated 06/03/2012 addressed to RTI applicant/activist Raman Sharma, has skipped the direct reply regarding the number of appeal and complaint cases pending with the commission for more than 2 years, 1 years and 6 months.
The RTI activist also said that the concerned PIO in his reply has stated that no such complied/analysed data is available with the commission. “Though Public Information Officer, R K Bhat has advised the applicant to file a first appeal against the order of the PIO under section 16(1) of J & K RTI Act 2009, if applicant is not satisfied, the reply stated.
RTI Activist Raman Sharma while giving his reaction over the reply has said, “ I personally wonder despite such a low number of cases in its hand, many cases remain unresolved with the commission for quite a long.’ Citing an example, he referred to one case on his own complaint with the commission in the month of May/2012 against a public authority but even after more than 10 months his case yet remained undecided.
Citing another reason for such decline of RTI applications and appeals he stated that after the amendments in the RTI rules in August last year, there is a steep downtrend of number of RTI applications hence also decline in appeals and complaints.
He informed that as compared to last two years data of appeal and complaint cases in the month of March, this year's pendency in the month of March is perhaps all time low. In March/2012 the closing balance of cases with the commission was 418, whereas in March/2011 the tally of pending cases was 72 .
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