Majority of Indians unaware of RTI Act.

FOUR years after it was enacted, four different reports on the implementation of the RTI Act present a dismal picture.

If one report says 85 per cent of India is still unaware of the Act and its uses, another says only 27 out of 100 applicants get the information they seek.

A third report says Gujarat actually took 30 months to reply to an RTI application, while the most damning of all, the Central Information Commission ( CIC)' s own committee felt: " Recommendations are either not taken seriously or are not understood in a holistic manner". The picture the reports present is grim, a feeling that is backed up by both RTI officials and activists. Two of the reports were given by NGOs -- Arvind Kejriwal's Parivarthan and Shekhar Singh's National Campaign for People's Right to Information, while the other two were by a committee set up by the CIC and the department of personnel and training ( DoPT).

It is the DoPT report that has made the harshest assessment.

According to joint secretary S. K. Sarkar, only 15 per cent of India is aware of the act. " Our study found that 26 per cent of the applicants had to go more than three times to the public information officer ( PIO) just to submit the application. This means they had to spend around Rs 300 in time and travel just to submit an application," he stated.

The CIC's committee headed by Andhra Pradesh chief information commissioner C. D. Arha pointed out that government officials, state governments as well as state information commissions, were not responding adequately to ensure the Act was implemented in letter and spirit. Giving an example, Arha said: " As soon as an official is appointed as the PIO, most of them take medical leave." Incidentally, Kejriwal's study gives the highest score to Kerala information commissioner P. Faizuluddin when it comes to public satisfaction, closely followed by K. K. Misra of Karnataka and Palat Mohandas, also from Kerala.

Singh's study said that 40 per cent of the rural RTI applicants and 15 per cent of urban applicants faced harassment from PIOs. " In UP, our own team that tried to file RTI applications faced harassment. In that state, filing an RTI application is considered to be a very dangerous activity," he pointed out.

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