Applicants now face a waiting period of over a year for their matters to be heard, effectively defeating the very purpose of the Right to Information Act.
Published Oct 27, 2025 | 6:00 PM ⚊ Updated Oct 27, 2025 | 6:00 PM
With over 26,000 appeals and complaints pending, justice delayed is transparency denied.
Synopsis: The combination of long-standing vacancies, a crippled penalty mechanism, a declining status, and the new legislative hurdle of the DPDP Act has left the Central Information Commission headless and toothless. The ultimate casualty is the citizen’s right to know, which is essential for a functioning democracy.
After 20 years of operation, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has become headless and toothless. India’s apex body for transparency is in crisis. As of 8 October 2025, the CIC is once again without a chief—the seventh time in the last eleven years that the crucial watchdog has been leaderless.
Following the retirement of the Chief Information Commissioner, Heeralal Samariya, on 14 September 2025, the body limps along with just two commissioners, leaving nine key posts vacant.
Transparency activists argue that this inaction is a calculated strategy to undermine the RTI regime.
Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retired) was before CIC (when this author was the CIC) in Delhi, and many annual conferences have highlighted many a time that the Chief is both the key adjudicator and the administrator. The CIC is supposed to be the guardian of transparency for the people, not for the government.
He noted: “By not appointing anyone despite being fully aware of their retirement dates, the government is deliberately killing transparency.”
This persistent failure to fill vacancies on time is a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s directions. In the 2019 judgment, the court warned that vacancies would “badly affect the functioning of the Act”.
More recently, in October 2023, the court cautioned that the RTI Act risks becoming a “dead letter” if posts remain unfilled. Despite this, and despite issuing advertisements for vacancies in 2024 and 2025, the selection process remains
incomplete.
The impact is far more than procedural: with over 26,000 appeals and complaints pending, justice delayed is transparency denied. Applicants now face a waiting period of over a year for their matters to be heard, effectively defeating the very purpose of the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
The rot is not confined to the Centre. The State Information Commissions (SICs) face the same neglect. According to a report by the Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS), seven SICs, including those in Jharkhand, Telangana, and Goa, were defunct for varying periods between July 2023 and June 2024.
As of mid-2024, over four lakh appeals were pending across all 29 commissions.
The chronic delays have gutted the accountability mechanism of the RTI Act. Under Section 20, Information Commissions have the power to impose fines of up to ₹25,000 on errant Public Information Officers (PIOs). However, with pendency stretching beyond a year, the threat of punishment has all but evaporated.
RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak, researcher and columnist, explains the chilling effect: “A PIO who ignores an RTI application knows his case may not be heard for over a year. By then, he’ll be transferred, and the commission will simply call whoever is in charge. The accountability aspect of RTI implementation vanishes into thin air.”
The SNS report confirms this failure, noting that commissions failed to impose penalties in 95% of applicable cases.
Compounding the administrative paralysis are damaging legislative changes. The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, has severely weakened the RTI Act by amending Section 8(1)(j).
Previously, this section allowed disclosure of personal information if the “larger public interest justified disclosure”, requiring PIOs to balance privacy and transparency claims. The DPDP Act, however, replaced this balance test with a sweeping exemption: “information which relates to personal information”.
Nayak calls this change “hugely problematic, retrograde,” warning that it “destroys anti-corruption efforts and accountability-seeking under RTI.” Furthermore, the amendment deleted a crucial provision that ensured citizens had the same right to information as Members of Parliament.
The DPDP Act also establishes a new, entirely government-appointed Data Protection Board to be the final arbiter on personal data issues. This new board, unlike the CIC, lacks the safeguard of requiring the Leader of the Opposition in its appointment committee, raising fears that the RTI Act will be subordinated to privacy concerns without adequate protection for public interest.
The challenges facing the CIC are not just about vacancies; they are about status and independence. Wajahat Habibullah, the first Chief Information Commissioner, recalls that his position was initially on par with the Chief Election Commissioner and a Supreme Court Justice. Today, the Chief Information Commissioner ranks no higher than a Cabinet
Secretary.
“The law has been watered down. The office of the commissioner has been made beholden to the government,” Habibullah noted. He stressed that without a Chief Information Commissioner to determine administration and work distribution, “the law is virtually ineffective”.
The combination of long-standing vacancies, a crippled penalty mechanism, a declining status, and the new legislative hurdle of the DPDP Act has left the Central Information Commission headless and toothless. The ultimate casualty is the citizen’s right to know, which is essential for a functioning democracy. The government must act immediately to
restore the integrity and capacity of the CIC before the RTI Act is irrevocably lost.
(Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
