The Haryana Government has spent Rs 113.42 crore on State Information Commission (SIC) over the last 20 years, but only Rs 2.49 lakh on creating public awareness about the Right to Information Act, according to information obtained through an RTI application filed by activist PP Kapoor of Samalkha.
The RTI Act was implemented in Haryana on October 12, 2005. Since then, the state government has spent Rs 113.42 crore on the salaries of state information commissioners and SIC staff.
As per the RTI reply, SIC functioned from two rented buildings in Chandigarh from October 2005 to December 2024. It shifted to its own building in Sector 3, Panchkula, on December 16, 2024. A total of Rs 47.63 crore has been spent on the SIC building, including Rs 9.30 crore on land, and Rs 38.83 crore on construction, while Rs 79.52 lakh has been spent on electricity bills, and Rs 13.62 lakh on office decoration. But five posts of state information commissioner remain vacant.
Kapoor said the four-storey building has been fully functional for 18 months without a valid Occupation Certificate (OC) and fire safety certificate. As per the Haryana Building Code, 2017, an OC is mandatory and entry without it is prohibited.
The reply stated that the SIC received 1,13,897 second appeals and 12,629 complaints in the last 20 years, of which 1,08,288 appeals and 11,186 complaints have been resolved. Only 5,609 second appeals and 1,443 complaints are pending.
Kapoor said the commission imposed penalties totalling Rs 1.79 crore on defaulting State Public Information Officers (SPIOs) between 2021 and 2025, of which Rs 64.55 lakh has been recovered.
The commission has also uploaded a list of 1,863 defaulting SPIOs on its website, and Rs 2.94 crore in penalties is yet to be recovered from them.
Kapoor alleged that while the state government spent crores on salaries of commissioners and staff, it spent only Rs 2.49 lakh on RTI awareness, even as most SPIOs failed to provide information under the Act.
He said the spending showed the commission had become “a haven for retired bureaucrats and government favourites”. Kapoor demanded that the commission’s building, operational without an OC, be sealed and the five vacant posts of information commissioners be filled.
