23,000 RTI appeals pending

CHENNAI: Lack of adequate staff has hit the Central Information Commission, resulting in about 23,000 pending Right to Information (RTI) appeals, according to Chief Information Commissioner Satyanand Mishra.Speaking to reporters after inaugurating a two-day workshop on ‘Right to information Act 2005’, jointly organized by the Institute of Public Enterprise and the NLC on Friday, he said the CIC had only six commissioners against the required strength of 11.“Currently, each one is clearing 300 appeals a month, which works out to 1,800 appeals a month as against the input of 2,300 cases,” Mishra said.Hence, “cases are taking about eight to 10 months to be decided,” Mishra said. To a query on the recent directive by the CIC to the President’s Secretariat to disclose details of correspondence among various ministries and Delhi Police on black money, he said the correspondence had been made public but the information seeker had not got back.Mishra also said none of the public sectors or the bank agencies had made pro-active disclosures, which were mandatory under the  RTI Act. The  CIC  has also started uploading the pending complaints. “Other Commissioners will be doing so soon,” he added.The Commission has, till now, received over 1 million RTI applications.