Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The biggest challenge facing the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) and three state information commissioners, who took the oath of office on Tuesday, is to clear the backlog of 16,500 second appeal cases filed under Right to Information (RTI).  Vijay Yadav has been sworn in as CIC, while Vandana Gandhi, Umashankar Pachauri, and Omkar Nath have taken the oath as state information commissioners. 

The posts at the State Information Commission had been lying vacant since February following the retirement of the commissioners. Since then, the numbers of cases have been spiralling up at the commission.

People familiar with the matter claimed, ‘the number of cases reaching the Commission and the number of cases disposed of are almost equal’, and to reduce this backlog, the commissioners will have to put in more hours in the office.

Sources said that the government departments at block and district level are not providing required information to the RTI applicants. Many offices are also not giving required information in the first appeal and so the applicants are coming up with the second appeal to the state commission.

Bhopal div 4000 cases of pending

From Bhopal division around 4000 cases of appeal and complaints are pending with the commission. With 3000 cases, Gwalior and Chambal division occupies the second position followed by Jabalpur division with 2500 cases, Rewa 2000 cases, Sagar 1500 cases, Ujjain 1100 cases and 600 cases of Shahdol division are pending with the commission.

Most cases of works dept

Maximum appeal cases are related to works departments like PWD, PHE, irrigation and a few others. Interestingly, only 10% of the cases are related to the personal issue, the rest are pertaining to the third party and of the ‘works departments’. People are interested in knowing what payment was given and to whom. People are keen to enquire about the property and assets of the government servants and their holidays.