States report card on RTI all red

New Delhi: The babus have not yet come to terms with the Right to Information (RTI) Act since its birth last year.

A report published by Centre for Civil Society (CCS), a Delhi-based think tank, found that three-fourth of the states and the Union Territories do not provide even half the information they are obliged to under Section 4 of the RTI Act.

The Duty to Publish Index: Report card on RTI compliance of states published by CCS shows that on an average the state provides less than a third of the information required.

Madhya Pradesh and Uttaranchal earned the distinction of being the most accessible providing 87 and 76 per cent of the required information, respectively.

Chandigarh (62) and Delhi (54) stand first and second respectively among the Union Territories.

Ironically, Rajasthan, the home to movement for the Right to Information, is at the bottom providing only 11 per cent of the information they must.

Assam, Jharkhand and Sikkim are among the states where the RTI was yet to be implemented.

Releasing the report, Shekhar Singh, founder member of the National Campaign for the People's Right to Information (NCPRI), said, "Section 4 is the most important part of the RTI Act. It enables even the most poorest in society to access information, they may

otherwise be afraid to ask for".

Singh added that the State Information Commissions should take cognisance of these lapses and pull up the laggard authorities for denying the people information. They have the power to do so under Section 19 of the Act, he added.

Section 4 of the RTI Act establishes proactive disclosure or the Government's duty to publish information.

It makes obligatory for all public authorities at every level of Government, to provide essential details about their functioning.

The section also makes mandatory for them to publish details about budgets, subsidies, licenses and projects, as well as contact information of their public information officers, according to the report.

However, more than half the 112 public authorities studied under the project did not provide the names, designations or contact information of their public information officers, the basic information needed to file an RTI request.