How many central public authorities exist in India?
18 May, 2013The Right to Information (RTI) Act came into existence in 2005 with the objective of bringing out transparency and accountability in the government functioning. A look at the working of the Act over the past years throws up interesting statistics.
There has been an increase in the number of public authorities registered with the Central Information Commissioner (CIC) from 1,597 in 2007-08 to 2,314 in 2011-12. This rise is partly attributable to fact that some of the offices tend to opt for declaring themselves as a separate public authority distinct from the department / ministry of which they are a part.
29 ministries/departments out of 66 are providing complete and detailed information to the Central Information Commissioner (CIC) as envisaged under the RTI Act regarding the applications which have been handled by them. The number of the public authorities which filed the returns to the CIC was 1382 in 2006-07 which rose to 1593 in absolute terms but in terms of percentage, it dropped from 86.53 % to 68.84 % during the corresponding period.
721 public authorities out of the 2,314 which were registered with the CIC, did not give information about their responses to queries in 2011-2012. As per the incomplete data available with the CIC, the total number of applications received in 2007-08 was 2.6 lakh which rose to 6.6 lakh in 2011-12. In 2011-12, over 4.3 lakh applications were carried over from the previous year which is appalling.
It has been reported in the media that over two dozen RTI activists have been killed when they tried to uncover the wrongdoings using RTI.
Table: Figures of central public authorities and RTI applications in India
Year |
2007-08 |
2011-12 |
Total public authorities registered |
1,597 |
2,314 |
Public authorities who submitted returns |
1,382 |
1,593 |
Applications pending from last year |
23 K |
4.3 L |
Applications received in the current year |
2.6 L |
6.6 L |
Total RTI applications |
2.9 L |
10.9 L |
Disposal % |
86.53 |
68.84 |
Rejection % |
7.2 |
8.3 |
Source: CIC Annual report 2011-12