State information commissions, which had ground to a halt during the COVID-19 lockdown, had sprang back to life during Unlock 1.0. But local restrictions imposed during Unlock 2.0 once again resulted in the appellate bodies retreating into dormancy, a survey has found.
A rapid survey conducted by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative found that 23 out of the 29 commissions, or 80 per cent of the bodies, had resumed hearings during Unlock 1.0, starting on June 1, 2020.
During Unlock 2.0, which started on July 1, 2020, when several state governments had imposed local lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19, only 44 per cent of the commissions, or 13 out of the 29 SICs, were found to be conducting hearings.
During Unlock 1.0, CHRI reached out to the offices of 11 SICs because information about their working was not available on their websites. Out of these, phone calls made to the offices of the commissions in Assam, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura remained unanswered. During Unlock 2.0, phone calls made to the offices of the SICs of Assam, Manipur and Tamil Nadu remained unanswered.
Overall, out of total 29 SICs, 23 had reopened their office and were conducting hearings during Unlock 1.0. Out of these, 16 commissions were conducting hearings through phone or video calls or using WhatsApp for all cases or only for urgent life and liberty matters.
Five SICs had opened their offices for the public and were conducting hearings in person. Six SICs were not conducting hearings and out of these, the appellate bodies in Goa and Jharkhand put up notices on their websites regarding adjournment of all hearings. The other four commissions—Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura—that were not conducting hearings did not have any information about their work status on their websites and calls made to their landline numbers were not answered.
During Unlock 2.0, out of total 29 SICs, only 13 were conducting hearings. Out of these, only ten commissions were conducting hearings through phone or video calls or using WhatsApp. Three SICs have opened their office for public and were conducting hearings in person. Information Commissions of 16 states were not conducting hearings, and out of these, seven SICs—Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Odisha and West Bengal—put up notices on their websites regarding adjournment of all hearings. The other nine commissions, which were not conducting hearings, did not have any information in this regard on their websites.
Also, six SICs—Bihar, Goa, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh—are headless. The state chief information commissioner's post has remained vacant for several months in these bodies. Moreover, the Jharkhand state information commissioner’s position is also vacant. The SICs of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh do not have functional websites. They could not be located through any internet search.
“The challenges posed by the spread of COVID-19 have acted as brakes on the regime of transparency established by the RTI Act. Most of the Information Commissions across the states could not put sustainable efforts to perform their role as champions of transparency during lockdowns in their states,” said Shikha Chhibbar, programme officer, Access to Information, CHRI.
Chhibbar noted that the commissions need to address the dilemma between staying open and risking the spread of COVID-19, and remaining closed and not promoting RTI. “As the role of Information Commissions during public emergencies is crucial, hearings shall be conducted virtually using smartphone apps or using ordinary phones until in-person hearings are not suitable,” she said.
“It is important for the SICs to establish a citizen-friendly mechanism for receiving complaints and appeals from people about government action at the state, district, tehsil or even village level. In order to do this, it is also necessary for them to devise sustainable measures for conducting hearings. They need to be open to addressing even verbal complaints at various levels of the administration via phone calls or video calls and advertise widely that they have resumed hearings in their commission,” said Chhibbar.
The CHRI, had in its earlier surveys, found that while the Central Information Commission resumed hearings in appeal and complaint cases from April 15, 2020, its counterparts in the states were not functional during the first two phases of the lockdown.
