Contrary to the claims of the Nayak committee that the RTI Act was a major hindrance in administration of banks, a study has found that the number of applications addressed to public sector banks have reduced over the last two years.
The study by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative over the period of two years has revealed that fewer citizens are seeking information from these banks through the RTI route.
The findings suggest that despite the reduction in the number of requests, most of the banks are rejecting more and more RTI applications than before.
"So by no stretch of imagination can it be said that the governance and the competitiveness of public sector banks is constrained by the RTI Act. Whether these trends are persisting can be ascertained only when the RTI data and bank statistics are published for the year 2013-14," Venkatesh Nayak, the lead analyst, said.
RTI data for 2013-14 has not been published by the CIC as its Annual Report is under compilation.
The voluntary group analysed data for 2011-12 and 2012-13 submitted by the public sector banks to the Central Information Commission in their annual reports for the compliance of the RTI Act.
"The average number of RTI applications per branch was the highest in Allahabad Bank, UCO Bank and Bank of Baroda at two per year in 2011-12. 50 per cent of the banks received an average of less than one RTI application per branch that year. This figure dwindled further in 2012-13 with no bank receiving even 2 RTI applications per branch," Nayak said.
He said on the contrary the banks started rejected more RTI application as the data revealed that rejection of RTI applications witnessed a significant increase in 2012-13 as compared to the rate of rejection in 2011-12.
"The rejection rate more than doubled in Allahabad Bank, United Bank, UCO Bank, and the Bank of Baroda in 2012-13," he said.
