Dear Friends Please find enclosed the mail that I received from Arvind. This is for your information.
*Divya Jyoti Jaipuriar* * * ---------- Forwarded message --------- Dear friends and fellow-activists, Thank you for your responses to our draft report evaluating the performance of Information Commissioners. The large number of bouquets and brickbats that we have received show that there is enormous public interest. We salute your refusal to accept our opinion blindly; healthy dissent and debate is not only inevitable, but essential for a healthy participatory democracy. The biggest question that everybody seems to be asking is – why did we place such and such Information Commissioner above or below another one in ranking? Our answer is: My colleagues and I at PCRF exercised no control over the ranking of any information commissioner. The ranking was done on an objective basis based on the available data and statistics, my colleagues and I were hands-off in this process. Commissioners were ranked by autonomous teams of researchers, based on the statistics generated by the orders of various Information Commissioners and public feedback. After assigning the work and the system parameters to the researchers, my colleagues and I stood back from the entire process, and let the process do its work without any interference. Rest assured, neither the primary data collected nor the statistics generated from this data was “cooked”. As a result, this study was quite an eye opener for all of us at PCRF, because our own beliefs about some Commissioners known to us were proved wrong. If you find some of the conclusions disturbing and startling, please believe us when we say that so do we! *Let me briefly describe the process of conducting this study: * * * - Around 52,000 orders passed by various Information Commissions across the country were collected. Some orders were on their websites, but others, we collected by filing RTI applications and sometimes making many trips to the concerned SICs. By and large, we got cooperation from all SICs, but there were some exceptions. For instance, we were unsuccessful in persuading Lucknow bench of UPSIC to give us copies of their orders. - Each order collected was read and analyzed by a team of 12 persons over a six-month period. - Around 34,000 orders were classified as pro-disclosure. So, we wrote letters to each of the appellants, asking whether they had received complete and satisfactory information. A team of 25 persons worked for three months to write letters and get replies. - We received written responses from around 6000 people. According to statisticians, this was a reasonably good sample. - However, this was not uniformly distributed over all commissioners. Response in some cases was inadequate. To rectify this, we contacted these commissioners and asked for phone numbers of appellants from their appeal files. Most commissioners agreed to provide this information. - Our teams visited Guwahati, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and many SICs to collect appellants’ phone numbers. In the case of Arunachal Pradesh, the phone numbers did not work due to bad connectivity. So, our team personally met as many appellants as possible in Arunachal Pradesh to get their feedback. - Thus, we tried to ensure that we had feedback from at least 20% of the appellants in whose cases pro-disclosure orders were passed. In the case of a few commissioners, we could not reach 20%. In some other cases, we got more than 40% feedback. With the help of a statistician, we are now working out the error margin in the case of each commissioner with the available sample size and population size. *The five parameters for our study are:* - Two parameters of our study viz. Pro-disclosure Factor and Deterrent Impact, came straight from analysis of orders, and not from appellants’ feedback. - The other two parameters viz. Overall Public Satisfaction and Effectiveness came from public feedback. - Pendency and disposals is a fifth parameter, which we have added belatedly. How does one interpret these parameters to evaluate a particular commissioner? One has to look at all parameters together to get a meaningful picture. For instance, if a commissioner issues a large number of pro-disclosure orders, but cannot get his orders implemented (low effectiveness), there is an overall failure on his part in procuring information for the citizen. All our raw data has been put up on our website www.rtiawards.org . We urge you to understand and cross-check our data and analysis, and point out mistakes so that we can correct them. Also give us more feedback on Information Commissioners’ performance. Activists in many states totally accepted the findings, including Bihar, MP, AP, WB, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh. Some of these activists independently released it to media, taking ownership of the report findings. Activists of some states like Orissa and Kerala disputed our findings. Some Information Commissioners such as R S Tolia and Prof M M Ansari sent us a written response. A few others let us know their views on phone. Their letters and our response thereto are on our website. We are grateful to Pradeep Pradhan from Orissa and Mr C J Karira from AP for pointing out specific mistakes. We have either already corrected them or will do so before finalizing this report. We are also grateful to Major Ravindran and Col Kurup from Kerala for giving us important feedback and inputs on the performance of Kerala commissioners. Some mistakes in Himachal Pradesh sheets have also been detected. We are correcting all these mistakes. We do realize that our methodology and parameters need further refining. The study has indeed left out some key aspects of the functioning of Information Commissioners, which we shall include next year. Please bear in mind that this is just the beginning of an important process, which must be carried out year after year in order to empower citizens with data, and give meaningful feedback to Information Commissioners to enable them to reflect upon and improve their own performance. *Some interesting findings:* - Not a single penalty has been imposed by 25 Information Commissioners and 4 state commissions! - A large number of show cause notices remain pending for years. Over 90% show cause notices remained pending for long periods in many commissions! - Nationally, just two percent of recorded violations were penalized! And a commissioner who imposes just 11% penalties is the top-ranking commissioner according to this parameter! - Some commissioners remand back a large proportion of orders to first appellate authorities, or reject them outright. Some commissioners in Maharashtra remand back as many as 50% cases. - A number of appeals are rejected on completely frivolous grounds (such as the absence of appellant’s signature on each page of the appeal). More than 30% cases in AP are rejected like this. - State Information Commisssion of Arunachal Pradesh is making relatively better use its civil-court-like powers conferred by Section18 of RTI Act, sometimes even issuing arrest warrants! We personally visited Arunachal Pradesh and met many appellants in Itanagar, the capital city. Appellants are overwhelmingly praising their commission. The public authorities are quite scared of appeals going to commission as they result in stringent penalties, and therefore they do their best to sort it out at their level. As a consequence, compliance with RTI Act is relatively high. - One of the front-runners for the post of Chief Central Information Commissioner, Prof M M Ansari, ranked very poorly on all the parameters. This has publicly put a big question-mark on his candidature. With what face would the government appoint him as Chief CIC when he has been publicly found wanting? The big picture that emerges from such aggregated data enables us to engage with the individual commissioners and state commissioners, discuss the shortcomings in their work and find solutions. For instance, after the release of this data, the activists and media in West Bengal repeatedly and publicly questioned the Commissioner, and he was forced to admit, for the first time, that the performance of the SIC was unsatisfactory. Some friends feel that no awards should be given. As the overall data was not very encouraging, we too felt that the jury may decide not to give any award this year. However, we are upbeat about the strict approach taken by Arunachal Pradesh. Let us see what the jury has to say. We are in the process of preparing our final report. The interim findings and worksheets have been on our site for more than a month now. Please send us your inputs at the earliest. If your inputs can be incorporated, even at this late stage, we assure you they shall be, so that together, we can say that this study belongs to all of us. We are building up this mechanism for citizens and activists everywhere to oversee the Information Commissioners. It is your mechanism. Please improve it and use it; don’t tear it down with destructive criticism. Make efforts to remove its shortcomings and see that this fledgling initiative survives and thrives. Help it to emerge as a strong voice of oppressed RTI applicants and appellants in all corners of the country, who were until now helpless and voiceless. With Warm Regards Arvind Kejriwal *-- *Please think about the environment and do not print this e-mail unless you really need to. Divya Jyoti Jaipuriar, Advocate Cell: +91 9868002365, +91 9971519209 Email: [email protected], Visit me at www.jaipuriar.com Notice: The information contained in this e-mail message and/or attachment(s) to it may contain confidential or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, use, review, distribution, printing or copying of the information contained in this e-mail message and/or attachment(s) to it are strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify me by reply e-mail or telephone and immediately & permanently delete the message and any attachment(s). 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