Sunshine in the Courts Ranking the High Courts on Their Compliance with the RTI Act

WWW.LIVELAW.IN Sunshine in the Courts Ranking the High Courts on their Compliance with the RTI Act Supported by WWW.LIVELAW.IN Acknowledgements About The Authors This Report is an independent, non-commissioned piece Vaidehi Misra, Chitrakshi Jain, Tarika Jain and Shreya Tripathy of academic work. The authors would like to thank Tata are Research Fellows at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy Trusts for their support. The funding for the report is part of working in the Judicial Reforms Initiative. Prashant Reddy T. “Vidhi-Tata Trusts Fellowship,” under which fellows undertake is a Senior Resident Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy research under the Justice, Access, and Lowering Delays and leads the Judicial Reforms Initiative. All the fellows who in India (JALDI) project. This multi-year initiative aims to worked on this report are Vidhi-Tata Trusts Fellows. advocate for and implement evidence-based reforms to eliminate existing backlog in courts, and ensure that cases are The Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy is an independent think- disposed within reasonable timelines. tank doing legal research to make better laws and improve governance for the public good. The authors would like to thank Mr. Shailesh Gandhi, former Information Commissioner the Central Information This report has been designed by Kunal Agnihotri. Commission, for reviewing this report and providing his valuable comments. Reshma Sekhar, Research Fellow at For more information, see www.vidhilegalpolicy.in Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, is also thanked for her inputs on the report. The authors are also grateful to Divya Dhavan, Contact us at [email protected] Jyoti Shankar Nayak, Megha Katheria, Pallavi Khatri, Saachi Agrawal and Vaidik Bajpai who as interns provided assistance October 2019 for this report. The authors would also like to thank the Public Information Officers of the High Courts, who over the course of time, have responded to our applications under the Right to Information Act, 2005. The errors, if any, rest with the authors. WWW.LIVELAW.IN Sunshine in the Courts Ranking the High Courts on their Compliance with the RTI Act Vaidehi Misra Prashant Reddy T. Chitrakshi Jain Tarika Jain Shreya Tripathy October 2019 Supported by WWW.LIVELAW.IN WWW.LIVELAW.IN Contents Volume I: National Report 1 Introduction and findings of four indices created to evaluate the compliance of the High Courts with the Right to Information Act, 2005. Volume II: Reports for Individual High Courts 63 A compendium of the State Assessment Reports WWW.LIVELAW.IN WWW.LIVELAW.IN Volume I National Report WWW.LIVELAW.IN WWW.LIVELAW.IN Contents of Volume I Executive Summary ........................................................................................1 I. Introduction ..............................................................................................4 II. The RTI Rules – The Legality & Convenience Index ......................................................7 A. The Legality Index: Were the RTI Rules of the High Court in line with the Requirements of the RTI Act? ............... 7 B. The Convenience Index - Did the RTI Rules of the High Court Provide Convenient Procedures for the Citizens? .....18 III. The Practice Index – How did the Public Information Officers respond to RTI Applications? ........24 IV. Proactive Disclosure of Information under Section 4 of the RTI Act by the High Courts .............30 V. Proactive Disclosure of Information under Section 4 of the RTI Act by the District Courts ..........41 VI. The Submission of Annual Reports by the High Courts to the Information Commission ............46 VII. Conclusion ...........................................................................................48 Annexure A ..............................................................................................53 Annexure B ...............................................................................................55 Annexure C ...............................................................................................58 Annexure D ...............................................................................................59 Annexure E ...............................................................................................60 WWW.LIVELAW.IN WWW.LIVELAW.IN Executive Summary The Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 which guarantees all Figure A: Legality Index Indian citizens a right to access information held by the state, was the first ever ‘sunshine law’ enacted by the Parliament. Like Scores Ranks most ‘sunshine laws’, the RTI Act provided a right to all citizens -10 1 Madras to demand information from any public authority in India, -15 2 Jharkhand while also creating a positive obligation upon these authorities -20 Allahabad -20 to proactively publish information about their functioning. 3 Karnataka -20 Punjab & Haryana High Courts, as constitutional bodies are also covered under -30 Andhra Pradesh the ambit of this Act. 6 -30 Telangana -40 Calcutta This report aims to measure the degree to which the High -40 Uttarakhand 8 Courts are in compliance with the RTI Act. We specifically -40 Himachal Pradesh chose to study the High Courts because they are the most -40 Kerala important judicial institutions with regard to administration of -50 Bombay justice at the state level. The High Courts are responsible for -50 12 Chhattisgarh planning and management of the entire District Judiciary. This -50 Rajasthan includes recruitment of judges and court staff, preparation of -55 Delhi budgetary estimates and infrastructure planning. Given the -55 15 Orissa -55 importance of the High Courts in ensuring efficient judicial Tripura -60 Patna administration for the District Judiciary, it is important that 18 -60 Madhya Pradesh they be transparent in their workings. -65 20 Sikkim -80 Manipur 21 In this report, we examined the legality of the High Court -80 Gauhati RTI Rules vis-à-vis the RTI Act, the convenience offered by -85 23 Meghalaya High Court RTI Rules, the practice of the Public Information -100 24 Gujarat Officers (PIOs) in replying to the RTI applications and the quality of disclosures made by the High Courts under Section Act. As per several judicial precedents of the Supreme Court, 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act. To capture and compare the variances rules made under a particular statute cannot go beyond or between the High Courts on these 4 themes, we developed 4 against the parent statute. Any such rule can be struck down indices namely the legality index, the convenience index, the for being ultra vires the RTI Act. practice index and the disclosures index. In addition, we also examined the extent to which District Courts were making After studying the RTI Rules of the High Courts and the proactive disclosures under the RTI Act on their respective District Courts, we devised twelve criteria on the basis of e-courts websites. which we assessed the Rules. These criteria broadly fell into two categories. The first category pertained to ‘missing The Legality Index for the High Court RTI information’ which basically assessed the sufficiency of Rules information provided in the Rules to enable the filing of RTI applications. The second category pertained to the illegal This index measures the legality of the RTI Rules made by each deviations of the RTI Rules of each High Court vis-à-vis the High Court under Section 28 of the RTI Act. This provision RTI Act. For every violation under these twelve criteria, 10 of the RTI Act delegated substantial power to each public points were deducted for the purpose of this index. Figure authority to fix the fees payable for filing RTI applications, A illustrates the rankings and the scores of the various High the cost of providing information, the mode by which the Courts on the legality index. fee and cost can be paid to the public authority and for any other matter which is required under the law. We decided to measure the legality of the High Court RTI Rules because we discovered that several of these rules were ultra vires the RTI 1 WWW.LIVELAW.IN The Convenience Index for the RTI Rules The Practice Index to measure the of each High Court responses by Public Information Officers Even if the RTI Rules of a High Court are completely legal, it is of High Courts entirely possible for the rules to make the process of requiring This index was developed to evaluate the responses of the information very inconvenient. For example, if the RTI Rules PIOs of all the High Courts to 3 sets of RTI applications that require payment of fees only in cash, rather than instruments we had filed with the High Courts to collect information on such as postal orders, it can become quite difficult to file RTI their budget statements, their audit reports and statistical applications through post, making it necessary for the citizen information required to be maintained by all High Courts to physically visit the premises of the public authority to file under Section 17 of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015. We the application in person. This is more inconvenient than the devised nine criteria against which the practices of each High option of filing an RTI application through post. Therefore, for the purpose of this index we developed six Figure C: Practice Index criteria to examine whether the RTI Rules of each High Court Ranks Scores make it convenient for the citizens to seek information under Delhi 50 the RTI Act. To ensure objectivity, the Government of India, Karnataka 1 50 RTI Rules 2012 were used as the benchmark against

Load more