The Central Information Commission recently accepted that they have no clue about how many appeals are pending before them. Excluding the CIC everybody under the RTI Act (including the applicant) has time limits set for discharging their responsibilities. Thus, has an application denied by a Government Department is as
good as dead Time limits have to be set for the CIC also.

        RTI has been rendered immobile due to the following follies of the CIC:-

• going soft in the initial stages on Public Information Officers (PIOs) who did not furnish the required information within 30 days.
• concurring with the mischievous acts of certain PIOs in rejecting applications under Section 2(f) of the Act when information can be denied only under section 8 of the Act. As such the wording of Section 2 (f) is the epitome of vagueness.
• failure to ensure that PIOs don't deny information under Section 8 of the Act. Section 8 of the Act should be used sparingly and in the rarest of the rare cases.

The Government Departments on their part have crippled the RTI Act through the
following acts:-

• whenever information is asked in the form of statistics, the same is rejected using the provisions of Section 7(9) of the Act. If the Government is serious about implementation of the RTI Act for revealing the possible misuse of Government Funds/ Resources, it should strike down this defeating provision.
• denial of information on the grounds that the request is not specific. An applicant cannot possibly know the exact file number in which an order was issued, to quote the same in his application. If he was privy to such information, there would have been no need for him to make an application under the RTI Act.
• denial of noting portion of the file in which a decision was taken.

Loopholes in the RTI Act have to be plugged. If Section 2(f) is to be made one of the channels for rejecting information, the Government should specifically include it in the act and also clearly define this Section. Whether or not noting portion of a file is accessible under RTI Act has to be made clear in all national newspapers and mass media. Departments have to be ordered to display on their websites, percentage of RTI Applications which they have fully complied with.

The RTI Act if used properly can unravel many a wrong doings in the way Government functions. Such an act cannot be left to the predatory desires of the PIOs and a passive CIC. If required be a la Indian Hockey Federation replacement of CIC has to be resorted to.