Over 2.94% drop in RTI queries during Covid year 2020-21

The Covid-19 year 2020-21 saw people filing less RTI queries seeking information from central and union territory offices, showing an overall decline of 2.94% though ministries and offices linked to pandemic related work like Health, Labour and Home registering an overwhelming increase.

The Annual Report 2020-21 of the Central Information Commission showed that 13,33,802 RTIs have filed with public authorities -- a decline of 40,513 from 13,74,315 in 2019-20 when the record number of queries were filed in a fiscal since the enforcement of the transparency law in 2005.

According to transparency activist Venkatesh Nayak, the number of RTI queries to central offices barring Union Territory administration will be 12.08 lakh and if one takes this into account, the decrease would be only 2.48%.

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"This is significant in itself, that the pandemic did not prove to be a dampener. Instead, people continued to seek information from various Ministries much like before," he said.

An analysis of the annual report by Nayak showed that the Ministry of Finance recorded the sharpest fall of 21,657 from 1,92,204 to 1,70,547 RTI queries followed by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs by 20,269 from 83,602 to 63,333.

On the contrary, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare witnessed a 79.09% rise in RTI queries -- from 33,738 to 60,423. Besides Health, the ministries directly linked to pandemic related work like the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of Labour and Employment also saw a substantial rise in RTI queries

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The Ministry of Labour and Employment saw a 46.90% rise -- from 80,978 to 1,18,957 -- while the MHA saw a 33.36% rise -- 44,453 to 59,286.

The public authorities which huge rise in RTI queries also include the Ministry of Steel (149.40%), Ministry of Textiles (54.64%), Ministry of External Affairs (48.11%), Ministry of Rural Development (41.18%), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (39.61%) and Ministry of Civil Aviation (33.94%),

"What is interesting from the above figures is that both line Ministries which were involved in coordinating relief efforts like Health, Labour, Home and several ministries looking after infrastructure reported a hike," Nayak said.

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The annual report also showed that 3,48,410 RTI applications were pending from 2019-20 at the beginning of 2020-21, which is 12.35% higher than the backlog figure of 3,10,110 reported in 2019-20 pending from 2018-29.

The Ministry of Defence has the highest backlog with 1,19,474 RTIs -- Indian Army accounted for the bulk at 1,07,601 RTIs pending from 2019-20 at the start of the pandemic year. "Interestingly a similar figure is mentioned for the backlog for the previous year i.e, pending from 2018-29 raising doubts as to whether or not the 2020-21 figure is accurate," Nayak said.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development came second with 62,682 pending cases in 2020-21 much higher than 50,887 reported in 2019-20.

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"The Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions which is the nodal agency for implementing the RTI Act across the Central Government reported a more than four-fold increase in pendency of RTI applications in 2020-21 at 5,589. It was only 1,915 at the start of 2029-20," Nayak said.

"The increasing backlog RTIs across several ministries and public authorities is a major cause for concern as they appear to have been pending from much before the onset of the first phase of the pandemic. The CIC has not bothered to address this issue in the narrative portion of its annual report," Nayak added.

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