The CIC should become a role model by compulsorily responding to every communication received by it within a time-bound period of 30 days. At present, RTI petitions have to be filed to know the status of communications addressed at the Commission.
AT A meeting of Information Commissioners held on June 2, it was decided that disposal of appeals/complaints at the Central Information Commission should not be less than those received. But it should be so in respect of individual Information Commissioners, for which data of monthly disposal on the CIC website should be for every individual Information Commissioner rather than a consolidated one.
Date-wise backlog of pending petitions with each of the Information Commissioners should be almost same. The present backlog with the Chief Information Commissioner needs drastic reduction by transferring some more public-authorities from him to other Information Commissioners. Since subjects before the CIC are of a very vital and sensitive nature, he naturally has to devote much more time to each petition than what is required normally. Otherwise also, apart from handling administrative functions as head of the Commission, he has to make frequent trips in and outside the country.
A temporary system may also be worked out whereby all petitions relating to a particular public-authority may be simultaneously fixed for hearing on one date so as also to save time and conveyance-money spent on officers of public-authorities for listed hearings together on the same date.The CIC should become a role model by compulsorily responding to every communication received by it within a time-bound period of 30 days. At present, RTI petitions have to be filed to know the status of communications addressed at the Central Information Commission.
The Commission’s website needs drastic improvement so as to auto-update most of its fields according to development in cases. If notice of hearing may be generated from the Commission’s website, then it can be made possible that fields like ‘Status of Appeals’, ‘Cause Lists’ etc may be auto-updated. Likewise, fields like ‘Monthly Disposal’ and ‘Status of Appeals’ should also be auto-updated while loading of the Commission’s verdict on the website. The website should also have status-report according to diary-numbers which is presently available only for internal use at CIC.
Many fields at the CIC website are not updated for long, and several others require merger to make the website user-friendly. Field ‘Status of Appeals’ needs correction because just one-fourth petitions out of the total filed under the name ‘Subhash Chandra Agrawal’ for example appear on the website while before modification, it showed correctly. CIC decision in respect of a petition should also be available at a click when opened from ‘Status of appeals’.
