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New Delhi: A new report on the implementation trends of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, released by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) in June, has found glaring inconsistencies in the Central Information Commission’s annual report for 2024-25. 

In its latest report the CIC had claimed 100% compliance in the submission of RTI statistics by the public authorities under its jurisdiction. However, CHRI found that 611 public authorities were missing from the CIC’s annual report for 2024-25. In the previous year, the number of authorities missing in the CIC report was 615. The commission has claimed 100% compliance in both reports.

CHRI’s report also highlighted that the Union Territory (UT) of Ladakh has been missing from the CIC’s reports since the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019. “Having promoted the use of RTI in the undivided J&K, we are aware of the existence of a vibrant group of RTI activists in Ladakh. Unfortunately, data about their interventions does not merit a mention in the CIC’s annual reports,” the report said.

“The CIC’s annual report for 2024-25 ought to have rung alarm bells within the Union Government. While the number of RTIs has increased, disposal rates have come down,” Venkatesh Nayak, Director at the CHRI’s India office, told The Wire.

Receipt and disposal of RTI applications

According to the CHRI report, five ministries – Corporate Affairs, Finance, Railways, Education and Defence – accounting for about 25% of the 2,303 public authorities, received more than half the total number of RTI applications filed in 2024-25. 

In a first, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, with 65 public authorities under it, received 2.54 lakhs RTI applications, overtaking the Ministry of Finance, which has over 200 public authorities. “The reasons for change in the trend are worth probing because the Corporate Affairs Ministry is a regulatory ministry with limited public dealing. The Finance Ministry’s RTI data comprises of data reported by banks, insurance companies and debt recovery tribunals amongst others, which deal with the public directly,” the report said.

“What was labelled as a law for empowering citizens........

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