Maharashtra’s RTI backlog is being reduced at a significant pace, but the latest figures also expose a more difficult governance question: whether disposing of appeals and complaints is translating into timely access to public records for citizens. Between April 2025 and September 2026, the state information commission reported disposing of 1,06,122 second appeals and complaints, including 36,911 appeals and 3,620 complaints handled by its Mumbai headquarters and Brihanmumbai benches.
That distinction matters in Mumbai and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, where residents routinely seek information from municipal bodies, housing and urban development authorities, revenue offices and other state departments. RTI applications can concern building permissions, redevelopment, land records, public works, procurement, service delivery and regulatory decisions. When access to those records is delayed, the delay can affect not only an individual applicant but also the ability of residents, journalists and civic groups to scrutinise how the city is planned and administered.
The information commission’s disposal figures therefore represent both progress and pressure. Mumbai’s headquarters disposed of 28,509 second appeals and 2,857 complaints during the 18-month period. The Brihanmumbai bench cleared another 8,402 appeals and 763 complaints. The Konkan bench, which covers districts including Thane and Palghar, disposed of 6,601 appeals and 1,616 complaints.
These numbers show the scale of work handled by benches serving one of India’s most concentrated urban regions. They do not, by themselves, show how long an individual applicant waited for a hearing, how many orders were complied with, or whether the information sought was eventually supplied in a usable form. A disposal is an administrative milestone. It is not automatically the same as effective disclosure.
The distinction becomes clearer when the commission’s receipts and pending cases are examined. Between April 2025 and August 2026, the Mumbai headquarters received 20,257 fresh appeals and 1,411 complaints. The Brihanmumbai bench received 17,099 appeals and 806 complaints during the same period. At the beginning of the period, as of March 31, 2025, the Mumbai headquarters had 19,554 appeals and 3,099 complaints pending, while the Brihanmumbai bench had 5,152 appeals and 2,745 complaints pending.
The Konkan bench began with 7,870 pending appeals and 4,236 complaints. It received 6,851 new appeals and 1,575 complaints, while disposing of 6,601 appeals and 1,616 complaints. The figures suggest sustained pressure rather than a problem that can be resolved through a single clearance campaign. New cases continue to arrive as citizens challenge delays, denials or inadequate responses from public authorities.
There is also a measurement problem. Statewide disposals between April 2025 and September 2026 were reported at 92,010 second appeals and 14,112 complaints. Fresh receipts, however, were reported through August 2026, at 87,899 appeals and 12,372 complaints. Because the two sets cover different periods, they cannot be directly compared as a like-for-like measure of backlog reduction. The supplied figures therefore indicate the scale of disposal but do not provide a complete current pendency calculation.
The commission’s cumulative figures raise a similar need for reconciliation. Since the RTI framework began operating, the supplied totals record 7,37,520 second appeals and 1,15,175 complaints received, against disposals of 6,67,486 appeals and 1,01,826 complaints. Those figures point to a substantial long-term workload, but they require comparison with the commission’s annual and pending-case records before they can establish the exact present backlog.
For urban governance, this accounting issue is not merely technical. A city’s transparency system depends on citizens being able to trace decisions across several institutions. A resident seeking information about a road project may need records from a municipal department, a development authority, a contractor or a state agency. A housing or redevelopment dispute may involve land records, planning permissions, building proposals and correspondence across offices. If the first response is incomplete and the appeal process is slow, the information may arrive after the decision has already shaped the neighbourhood.
The commission’s emphasis on proactive disclosure addresses this problem at its source. State chief information commissioner Rahul Pande told Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis that the commission was seeking to maximise voluntary, proactive and suo motu disclosures under Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act. The provision requires public authorities to publish specified categories of information without waiting for individual applications.
In principle, stronger Section 4 disclosures can reduce the number of routine requests that reach information officers and appellate authorities. For urban residents, the practical value would lie in regular and accessible publication of records such as project details, permissions, rules, budgets, tenders, decisions and responsible officers. The supplied material does not establish that such disclosures have already reduced Mumbai’s appeal workload. It does, however, identify proactive disclosure as a central administrative response to the continuing pressure.
The commission has also highlighted manpower shortages and budgetary constraints. These constraints help explain why a high-volume disposal drive cannot be assessed only through headline totals. Hearing capacity, case scrutiny, record retrieval, order writing and compliance monitoring all require institutional resources. A commission may clear a large number of cases while still facing difficulty in giving applicants predictable hearing dates or tracking whether public authorities have followed its orders.
Fadnavis has urged the commission to explore artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies to improve the handling of incoming cases. Technology could assist with registration, classification, case-status updates and document management. But the supplied account also makes clear that any technology-led intervention would need to support, rather than replace, statutory scrutiny and reasoned decisions by information commissioners. The legal responsibility for deciding whether information should be disclosed cannot be reduced to automated case processing.
The wider state figures show that the workload is not confined to Mumbai. Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar disposed of 13,914 second appeals and 1,409 complaints. Pune cleared 12,404 appeals and 4,218 complaints, while Nashik disposed of 11,925 appeals and 1,755 complaints. Nagpur cleared 6,115 appeals and 1,286 complaints, and Amravati disposed of 4,140 appeals and 208 complaints.
The distribution reflects the geographical and administrative spread of Maharashtra’s information system. Mumbai’s figures are especially relevant to the built environment because the city and its metropolitan region contain a dense concentration of municipal offices, planning agencies, housing authorities and infrastructure departments. Yet the regional totals show that delays in access to public records are also a state-wide institutional issue.
The most important test of the clearance drive will therefore be what happens after disposal. Citizens need timely hearings, accessible case-status information and compliance with disclosure orders. Public authorities need to publish more information before applications are filed. The commission needs reliable reporting that distinguishes cases received, cases disposed of, cases pending, orders complied with and cases where information was denied under the law.
The RTI Day programmes held by the commission, including orientation sessions for public information officers and first appellate authorities, stakeholder discussions and awareness camps, are part of that institutional response. Their effectiveness will depend on whether training improves the quality and timeliness of first-stage replies, since the information commission is a second appellate forum rather than the first point of contact for most applicants.
Maharashtra’s latest numbers confirm that the commission has undertaken a large disposal exercise, with Mumbai and the MMR accounting for a substantial share. They do not yet establish that the underlying access problem has been solved. The next evidence to watch is whether proactive disclosure expands, whether staffing and budgets improve, whether case-status information becomes easier to obtain, and whether the commission can publish reconciled figures that show the actual change in pendency. For a city dependent on complex public agencies, the success of RTI is ultimately measured not by how many files leave the commission, but by whether citizens can obtain the records needed to understand and question urban decisions.
