Shall hear all pending appeals of 2018 by March: Ajit Kumar Jain

Applicants filing appeals and complaints to the Brihanmumbai bench of the state information commission (SIC) may not have to wait longer. The bench will be hearing appeals and complaints of 2018 by March.

In most other benches, some of the appeals are as old as 2016 — two years old. The total pending appeals at the state information commission is 37,456 as on January 31, 2018. The total number of complaints - most of which are filed for non-compliance of the commission order stands at 2,781 as on January 31, 2018.

Of this, the most number of appeals are pending with the Nashik bench at 9,792 appeals followed by the Pune bench with 8,126 pending appeals and 7,166 appeals pending with the Amravati bench.

"By March, we will be hearing both appeals and complaints of 2018. With respect to appeals, those pending since 2017 are already almost clear," said Ajit Kumar Jain, the state information commissioner of Brihanmumbai bench who is also holding charge of the chief commissioner.

Jain, who was until recently hearing cases of the headquarter bench. Jain has cleared over 20,507 second appeals till January.

Compliance of the order, however, continues to be a concern as per most RTI activist.

"The compliance is poor despite the SIC order. The commission needs to take a lot more stern action on Public Information Officials. There is no reason why PIOs should not get fined when the appeals have reached the commission stage," said an RTI activist. Recently an applicant got to know that in almost all cases, there was no penalty recovered.

Jain said that the complaints had reduced drastically and there was better compliance.