The State Information Commission of Tamil Nadu has the lowest performance of responsiveness under the RTI Act concerned, with only up to 14% of the information sought. Maharashtra was second lowest with sharing only 23% of the information asked for.

The report was issued on the Performance of Information Commission (ICs) in India for 2021-22 by Satark Nagrik Sangathan.

Key Points

Only 10 ICs provided the full information in response to the RTI applications filed as part of this assessment.
These included Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, and the northeastern states of Tripura, Nagaland, and Sikkim.
A total of 145 RTI applications were filed seeking identical information from all the 29 ICs as a part of the assessment by the organization.
The RTI applications were tracked to assess how each IC performed as a public authority in terms of maintenance and disclosing information.
Tamil Nadu was the worst performing IC as it denied most of the information sought.
They denied the information sought including several appeals and complaints dealt with the IC, details of the penalty imposed, and compensation awarded stating that the information could be provided only ‘after getting the approval of State Legislature Assembly’, though no such provision exists in the RTI Act.
The SIC of Chhattisgarh denied the information on several points stating that under the prevailing state rule, in one application information on only one topic could be sought.
The SIC of Bihar failed to provide any information under the RTI Act for the assessment published in 2020 and 2021, however, improved its performance and furnished 67% of the information sought.
The report also said that a large number of ICs across the country were returning cases without passing orders.
Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh returned around 40% of the appeals or complaints received by them.