In October 2005, right after the Right to Information (RTI) Act came into force, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) commissioned Price water house Coopers to study the “key issues and constraints faced by the information providers and information seekers”.

The study revealed, amid other unflattering details about the government’s incompetence, that as many as “77 per cent of information seekers got incomplete and/or inaccurate information”.  That means eight out of 10 times, the first response from the public office concerned wasn’t satisfactory. The RTI Act, in such cases,gives the information seeker the option to file an appeal with the Central Information Commission, headed by the Central Information Commissioner (CIC).

Currently, though, there is no CIC – and for the times when you receive incomplete and/or inaccurate information, there is not much you can do now except wait for a CIC to be appointed (and this one seems to be a particularly long wait). The country has been without a CIC for eight months now, significantly diluting what is perhaps the most important tool at our disposal to make the government accountable and keep track of public money.

So what does appointing a CIC entail that it has taken so long? On the last day of the previous year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the formation of a search committee, which would recommend shortlisted candidates to another committee (this one includes Modi himself). However, the first search committee had to be disbanded as soon as two of its members were themselves applicants – a hilarious situation on the surface, but suggestive of a total lack of coordination among different governmental agencies. Even more curiously, it turned out (in the form of an RTI response) that there were no minutes to the committee’s meetings being maintained – and the DoPT has no official record of who attended the meetings. “The fact that they don’t have records of the meeting means that this is a systematic ploy to kill the RTI,” says Shankar Singh, one of the pioneers of the country’s RTI movement.

That the RTI is a powerful tool, the government knows very well.  In fact, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has benefited from it abundantly. It was instrumental in exposing the Aadarsh Society scam and Public Distribution Scam – events that were key to the erosion of the Congress’ credibility and the rise of the BJP as a necessary alternative.  In fact, when Manmohan Singh had once remarked that the RTI needs a “critical look”, the BJP had gone up in arms against Singh. Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, had made jibes at Singh for taking credit for the Act, even as the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) was denying information under the Act.

Perhaps, it is the knowledge of the potency of RTI, having been at the favourable side of it for so long, that has resulted in the BJP singing a completely different tune after coming to power.  In less than a month of becoming Prime Minister, Modi’s office denied information to an RTI query.

According to Shankar Singh, the aversion to divulging information is a result of reluctance on part of the political regime to be accountable. “The Congress did all it could do to stonewall the Act and now the BJP’s continued from where the Congress left,” lamented Singh.  Singh also contended that it is not just the CIC, but also state public information units that are understaffed to deal with the high volume of information requests.  “It is like court cases in the country; information requests drag on for ages and that nullifies the whole point of the Act,” he remarked.

Nikhil Dey, one of the most vocal advocates of RTI, was categorical in condemning the current dispensation, calling its U-turn on the Act “pathetic”. “When they were in Opposition, they actively supported us because it helped them but they have been pathetic so far,” he said. Dey also said that although the last PMO wanted to amend the Act from time to time, it was a “model office” in terms of releasing information under the RTI. “The last government, when it wanted to hurt the RTI, tried making amendments but this one has insidiously hurt the Act without making much of a song and dance, which is much worse,” Dey claimed.

Dey’s scepticism over the new government’s intentions seems more than well founded. In a startling revelation, the government admitted (again in response to an RTI query) that it had decided this year’s Padma awardees without completing due procedure.  This is in sharp contrast to the last dispensation, which had made a habit of publishing all related information about the selection of the awardees online.

Vishal Kudchadkar, a US based RTI activist, said he has found it difficult to extract information from both regimes, though under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), he did get the information that he sought from the Indian Consulates and Embassy in the US.  Narrating a personal experience, he said, “I had filed two RTI applications with the current PMO. I received a ‘file missing’ reply on one and no reply to the other. I filed a First Appeal for the former and the Appellate Authority [AA] directed the Public Information Officer to send me the information/status of file within 15 days. It has been almost three months now and I haven’t received any intimation despite a reminder to the AA couple of months ago.”

In another development, the DoPT reportedly sent a letter to the Secretary of the Central Information Commission, transferring the financial powers of the CIC to a government-appointed secretary. Criticising the move, Dey said there was no such provision in the RTI Act. “A babu cannot be in charge of the Commission, this is not signing papers we are talking about,” he commented.

The Delhi High Court has meanwhile asked the Centre to explain why it is taking so long to fill vacancies in the Central Information Commission. It was supposed to get back with an answer last week but still hasn’t.  The RTI Act will be older by a decade this August, but with almost 40,000 pending appeals with the CIC and no signs of any urgency on the government’s part, it is unlikely to be a very happy 10^th birthday.