PANAJI: A number of litigants awaiting the hearing of their cases, pending before the Goa State Information Commission will now get some respite as the GSIC is all set to get its new state information commissioner soon.

The post is lying vacant since past two months, after the end of the tenure of the SIC, Mr Afonso Araujo.

The Chief Minister, Mr Digambar Kamat told ‘The Navhind Times’ on Wednesday that the exercise for appointment of the SIC is in progress. "The decision would come at a high level meeting to be held for selecting the SIC," he added.

The secretary to the GSIC and the first appellate authority at the commission, Mr P S Meena told this daily that on an average, 10 hearings are adjourned every day, due to the absence of the SIC and people have to wait endlessly for the verdicts. "However, it is up to the government to make this appointment," he added.

It may be recalled that a champion of information rights, Mr Arvind Kejriwal, who was in Goa last month had observed that the level of compliance by officials to orders of the information commission under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, in Goa is only 33 per cent. "We analysed 254 orders of the Goa state information commission and in 158 of the cases, the commission had ruled that information should be provided to the applicant," he had observed, pointing out that furthermore, in only 25 per cent of the cases where the information was not provided, a show cause notice was issued by the commission.

Mr Kejriwal had also suggested that a common forum should be set up by the RTI activists in Goa to address problems of non-compliance to RTI queries and further advised that the state information commissioner in Goa should be convinced by the activists to hear out the general public once a month.

Mr Meena, expressing similar views said that many of the public information officers as well as first appellate authorities in various government as well as semi-government departments, corporations, public sector undertakings and municipalities do not respond to the queries under the RTI Act, 2005. "They delay the provision of information, provide false information or do not give information at all," he stated, noting that therefore, the public is forced to approach the state information commission.

It was also informed that most of the PIOs do not follow the Section 4(1)(a) of the RTI Act, 2005, which provides for pro-active discharge of information pertaining to the departments, corporations, municipalities and so on, on the website.