If you have filed a complaint with the Central Information Commission, you can never be sure whether it is safe and is still being processed. V Mahajan from Dhule, Maharashtra sent 3 complaints in October 2006. He called up CIC in November to find the status of his complaints. He was informed that his complaints could not be traced. He again sent his papers in December. Again when he enquired in January, he was shocked to learn CIC had again lost his papers. He does not know what to do now.

Manoj Kamra from Rajasthan filed an appeal in June last year. His papers were also lost twice. Dr B K Mishra filed 32 appeals in CIC in December. He was called for a hearing on 22.2.06. He specially came from Bihar to attend the hearing only to be told that the files were not traceable.

A K Jalani filed 4 complaints against Shipping Corporation between October to December.  When he enquired on phone in February about the status of his cases, he was told that the CIC had lost his papers. Last week, he came from Mumbai to the CIC specially to file his papers.

Is it just mismanagement at CIC? Jalani does not agree. He alleges collusion. “I had filed RTI about a case involving huge corruption in Shipping Corporation. When I enquired about my papers at CIC, interestingly everyone here knew my name and about my case but could not locate my file, which means that every staff has read my papers.”

It is not even easy to file an appeal with the CIC. Pramod Gupta filed his appeal with CIC on 09/10/2006. A full one month later, CIC returned the appeal on 17/11/2006 asking him to file appeal in prescribed format. Gupta sent the appeal again in prescribed format on 20/11/2006 which was again returned after one month saying that four copies should be sent. He again sent four copies on 12/01/2007. It was again returned but this time without any reasons. Gupta tried to contact Nisha Singh in CIC, who had returned the case, for almost two weeks but she never came on phone. Finally, Gupta could speak to one Sunil Srivastava in CIC who accepted that Pramod’s appeal had been wrongly returned. Strangely, rather than accepting the appeal, Shriastav advised Gupta to file a fresh RTI to the CPIO again!

There are many people who are struggling to file an appeal at CIC. Interestingly, appeals from Neelam and many others were accepted without format and in single copy in December.

So, what is the rule? Is there a prescribed form? Should you file four copies? There is no such rule. The rules only require a person to provide certain basic information decide the appeal. Rules do not require any form to be filled up. People from remote corners of the country do not know about such nitty gritties. Appeals by people from remote corners of the country are simply being rejected on flimsy and illegal grounds.

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