HYDERABAD: The newly formed Telangana State Information Commission is faced with an uphill talk of disposing off its large pendencies after bifurcating close to 16,000 pending Right to Information (RTI) first appeals. Close to 50 per cent of the total pendencies belong to Andhra Pradesh and are yet to be diverted back to the Andhra Pradesh Information Commission. With just two State Information Commissioners (SIC) appointed in place of sanctioned 11 posts, only about 30 to 40 cases are being heard every day instead of nearly 250-280 cases that were dealt with in the erstwhile united State Information Commission.
The onus to fill the remaining vacancies rests with the state government and the Governor.Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Raja Sandaram Soma and the only SIC Buddha Murali had assumed office on September 25 and started hearing cases on October 23. The officials said they have, in the meantime, taken steps to streamline the commission’s operational effectiveness in dealing with cases. “The bifurcation process is still not complete, the cases have to be bifurcated and some of the AP officials are still stationed here.
The appeals for Andhra Pradesh still come to Telangana office,” said Sandaram. “Of the 16,000 cases still pending, around 7,000 are appeals pertaining to AP,” he added. “As part of streamlining the department’s operations, we have made changes in the processing of appeals we received,” said the CIC.
Earlier, there was no scrutiny of the application for errors in the attached documents and signature at the time of filing an appeal. It was looked at only during hearings. This often led to cases going into the pending list when they come up for hearing.
“There would be mistakes and the appellant would have to correct the mistakes before the case is up for next hearing. So time is lost between filing of the appeal and the case being taken up,” explained Sandaram. To save time, all appeal documents will now be scrutinised for mistakes and will be accepted by the Commission only after necessary rectifications are done, he added.
Also, the Public Information Officers (PIOs) of the department against whom the appeal is filed were unaware of the appeal being filed until the case came up for hearing. When they were informed, the PIOs often sought time to respond, further leading to delay. “From now on, as soon as the appeal is filed we will inform PIOs and enclose a copy of the appeal to them. This will also give the department ample time to prepare for a response before the hearing,” he added.
As on May 14, as many as 15,953 petitions and second appeals were pending with the State Information Commission for disposal. SIC P Vijaya Babu finished his term whereas the Supreme Court had vacated four SICs — S Imtiyaz Ahmed, M Vijaya Nirmala, Lam Thanthiya Kumari and Varre Venkateswarlu in April.