Rapid rise in ‘other’ reasons for rejection of RTI Application –Annual report of CIC
17 Dec, 2011
The annual report of the Central Information Commission for 2010-11 tabled in Parliament has shown that in 43 per cent cases, the public authorities have invoked exemption clauses of section 8, section 9, section 11 and section 24 to deny information to RTI applications. On 57 per cent of occasions, the RTI applications have been rejected, fall in 'others' category; in so far as reasons for rejection are concerned. There has been a significant rise of nearly 24 percent over the last year in the rejection of the applications for reasons termed as 'others’. 'Others' are reasons which are not included in the exemption clauses given in the RTI Act. Such a rapid rise of the ‘others’ category calls for close examination by the public authorities to identify what these ‘other’ provisions are as there are no other exemption clauses stipulated in the Act for rejecting a request for information.
As per the data given in the report, over 21,600 RTI applications were rejected during 2010-11 which is 5.2 per cent of the total 4.17 lakh applications received by the Central Government public authorities.