Bihar ranks 10th on RTI parameters

The Times Of India

23 October 2009,

PATNA: Although Bihar has earned laurels at the national level for taking the initiative to provide information under the RTI Act besides establishing Jankari call centre, the state is placed tenth in the country with regard to RTI parameters. There are 28 informtion commmissions in the states and one at the Centre with altogether 94 information commissioners. Bihar is far behind Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab, Orissa, Assam and four other states but ahead of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states. This has been revealed in a survey conducted by the National RTI Awards Secretariat to assess the performance of information commissions across the country for National RTI Awards 2009. It is based on the feedback from 6,000 people. As far as overall public satisfaction with the commssions is concerned, Bihar has been given 31% compared to 55% to Karnataka and 52% to Kerala. The finding said the national average of getting information under RTI is 27%. These findings were released on Thursday by the Bihar Right to Information Manch. The Secretariat also analyzed 51,128 orders passed by the information commissioners. Of the cases in which orders were passed, only two per cent of the officials were penalized. "If an officer does not provide information under the RTI Act, despite an order from the information commission, there is two per cent chance that he would be penalized," the finding said. There are 23 commissioners who have virtually never imposed any penalty for non-disclosure. Bihar's two information commissioners Shakeel Ahmad and P N Narayanan have been placed at 30th and 33rd position respectively on effectiveness parametre and the same ranking in imposing penalties.