Activities

In India, the implementation of the RTI Act was quite uneven across the states. In some states, information was being provided to citizens on time, while in a large number of other states, implementation was slow and tardy. PRIA took up the initiative to assess the progress of RTI in twelve states. The idea was to bring out an all India picture of RTI, so that experiences - good as well as bad - are shared. Furthermore, the effort was to make the RTI Act simple and understandable to all by analysing the most important cases or landmark orders of Central Information Commission.

PRIA's probe revealed that the government was taken aback by the mobilisation of citizens on the RTI Act and began to subvert the Act by proposing amendments to it, charging high application fees in some states and denying information to citizens on one pretext or another in other states. The 12 states that PRIA earmarked to track the progress of the RTI Act are Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh.

PRIA designed five interventions to track the Act's progress and make people aware of its existence and functioning.

The government was trying to make the understanding of the Act a difficult task. Workshops organised in each of these states discussed the ways it did so, including the high fee structure, complicated mode of fee payment, unavailability of the list of Public Information Officers (PIO), no pro active disclosure by public authorities, lack of training of PIOs and reluctance of the information commissioners to penalise PIOs. Participants were briefed on these problems and provided tips on getting past them and filing applications.

	Uttarakhand
	Chhattisgarh
	Jharkhand
	Kerala
	Gujarat
	Bihar