Odisha’s Fast-Track RTI Model Highlighted at National Commissioners Summit

18 Sep 2026, 09:59 by Vinay Kakkad · KalingaTV

Hyderabad: India’s transparency architecture is being squeezed from two sides: ballooning piles of unsettled citizen petitions on the inside, and a sweeping national data privacy overhaul on the outside.

When the country’s State Chief Information Commissioners met in Hyderabad this week, the core problem before them was straightforward: how to keep the Right to Information (RTI) machinery from stalling under its own procedural weight without shutting out the public it was built to serve.

The solutions that emerged from individual states, however, revealed sharply different philosophies.

Maharashtra has opted for administrative filters at the front door. The state’s Chief Information Commissioner walked delegates through new state-level RTI rules that enforce strict drafting limits on applicants—capping every request at one single topic and a maximum length of 150 words to curb rambling, multi-part inquiries.

Odisha, by contrast, targeted the hearing room rather than the applicant’s pen.

Representing the state, Odisha Chief Information Commissioner Manoj Parida explained that the commission brought down its backlog of unresolved appeals and complaints by adopting summary trials for faster decisions and putting an end to routine, unnecessary adjournments. The strategy focused on speeding up disposals internally rather than restricting what citizens can ask.

The contrast underscored a running debate throughout the sessions: how commissions can prevent vexatious filers and vested interest groups from jamming the pipeline while keeping the process frictionless for everyday citizens.

Frontline pressure emerged as another shared anxiety. Beyond procedural bottlenecks, commissioners warned that public offices must get ahead of inquiries rather than simply react to them. The Central Information Commissioners pushed state governments to enforce proactive, suo motu publication of records across all official department websites—arguing that open portals directly eliminate the need for people to file formal RTI requests in the first place.

That preventive approach, delegates noted, will only work if state administrations also fix chronic shortages of staff and operational resources within the commissions themselves.

Compounding the workload is an impending regulatory clash. The summit devoted significant time to untangling the operational overlap between the RTI Act and the new Personal Data Protection framework, analyzing how public disclosure obligations will coexist with stricter statutory privacy mandates.

Because lower-level public information officers will sit directly on that fault line, delegates insisted that regular, hands-on training for grassroots officials must become an immediate administrative priority.

The national conference, held under the chairmanship of the Central Information Commissioner, was officially opened by Telangana Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla.