RTI activist Shailesh Gandhi's term as CIC comes to an end

New Delhi: One of India's most unusual experiments with citizen participation in governance is set to come to an end on Friday, when central information commissioner (CIC)Shailesh Gandhi retires. Gandhi, a noted Right To Information (RTI) activist from Mumbai, was appointed to the central information commission in 2008.

Under the RTI Act, there is a state information commission in every state for its laws, and a central information commission for central Acts, headed by a chief information commissioner and up to ten commissioners under him. In 2008, the UPA caused something of a stir by appointing Gandhi as one of the central commissioners. Yet unknown in Delhi, he was well-known in Mumbai as a muck-raking RTI activist, who had taken to the new law with vigour and had rocked the Maharashtra government with RTI applications on controversial redevelopment schemes, among others. Such was his reputation that after his appointment, rumours swirled among activists that the new 'sarkari' posting was intended to stop him from filing more RTI applications.

But if Delhi was meant to tame him, it has only made this 65-year-old grandfather more feisty and energetic than ever.

A short, energetic man with a permanent twinkle in his eye and a healthy Gujarati love for papads, Gandhi gives every conversation his full attention. An alumnus of IIT Bombay, Gandhi set up and ran a successful plastics packaging business for over 20 years, winding it up in 2003 to dive headlong into "something socially relevant". His first RTI application revealed the extent to which cops were transferred on "request" in violation of a Maharashtra Act expressly prohibiting this, and shook the state government and police force. Inspired by the potential of Maharashtra's RTI Act, he joined the campaign for a national law.

In September 2008, Gandhi was appointed to the central information commission in a manner he describes as "entirely illogical, completely arbitrary...like a lottery." Since his appointment, Gandhi has heard over 20,000 cases and passed important orders including on the release of the Gadgil committee's report on environmental damage to the Western Ghats. In his last week at the office, Gandhi ruled that cabinet notes relating to new legislation must be made public within seven days of the Bill being tabled in Parliament.

Among the accomplishments Gandhi is most proud of is that his is the first paperless government office in India, and of the speed at which he has worked, hearing over 20,000 cases in his tenure, over 25 a day. However high rates of pendency dog the central and state information commissions: 18,000 cases at the centre, 24,000 in Maharashtra and 35,000 in Uttar Pradesh. "If this pendency keeps rising, we're going to reach a point very soon where it takes three to five years to hear a case, and citizens' attitude to the RTI will become similar to what it is to the judiciary: hopeless," says Gandhi. This is one of the issues he intends to work on following his retirement.

Gandhi and his wife, Bharti ("the last three letters of her name spell RTI," Gandhi likes to say), plan to spend the next two months with their daughter, son-in-law and infant grandson in the US, after which, he says, he will be back to work full-time on the RTI and governance. "I'm quite sure I'm soon going to be standing before this same commission as an RTI appellant," he says with a chuckle.

Gandhi says he feels lucky to have met thousands of determined RTI users, notable among them Harish Kumar, a small-scale plastics dealer and RTI activist who was injured in the Delhi High Court blast last year. "I met him in the hospital after he'd had to have his leg amputated and he was amazingly positive. He's come before me several times after that, now with a prosthetic leg. His case was the first one I heard as information commissioner and he says he's disappointed he couldn't be my last case either," says Gandhi.