Uttar Pradesh’s 11 Right to Information (RTI) commissioners find themselves short of typists as they deal with about 250 appeals a day; Andhra Pradesh RTI chief works on a shoe-string budget and is “too embarrassed” to ask for more due to Chief Minister YSR Rajasekhara Reddy’s untimely death and the floods; the RTI mechanism in Orissa is a one-man army; while the Mizoram information commission has received only 13 complaints since RTI started in 2005.

On the fourth anniversary of RTI on Tuesday, as information commissioners from across the country occupied front rows at the annual convention on ‘Strengthening the Right to Information’ organised by the Chief Information Commission in New Delhi, it was clear that the realities of running the transparency law on the ground were much different.

“Eleven of us have one typist each. At a time, three or four may go on leave, then we have to share the typists, which is ridiculous because we hear at least 250 appeals a day,” said senior Uttar Pradesh Information Commissioner Gyanendra Sharma, who works with an annual budget of just over Rs 3 crore.

Interestingly, added Sharma, a large chunk of the RTI applicants were government servants. “At any day in my office, 25 of the 100 chairs in my room are occupied by government servants, from bureaucrats to IPS officers to clerks, who have filed RTI appeals on their promotions, salaries, perks and confidential reports,” he said.

However, while both the nature of the applicants as well as their numbers — up five times since RTI was enacted — *show the effectiveness of the Act, the state transparency body is yet to be computerised. “Public has no access to the day’s list of cases and it is a headache even if you get a favourable order from us. The latter would mean that you will have to come to our offices and personally take a photocopy of the verdict,” Sharma admitted during a break in the convention.

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