Increasing number of government departments are rejecting RTI applications citing reasons other than exemption clauses of the transparency law, annual report of the Central Information Commission for 2010-11 made public today said.

"On 57 per cent of occasions, RTI applications have been rejected, fall in 'others' category; in so far as reasons for rejection are concerned," the report tabled in Parliament today said.

In 43 per cent cases, the public authorities have invoked exemption clauses of section eight, nine, 11 and 24 to deny information to RTI applications.

As per the data given by the Commission, over 21,600 RTI applications were rejected during 2010-11 which is 5.2 per cent of the total 4.17 lakh applications received by the Central Government public authorities.

Although the rejection of application was on decline, the report said it "could have been matter of satisfaction" if all the public authorities have submitted their annual returns but only 67.5 per cent of them have done so

"There has been a significant rise of approximately 24 percentage points over 2009-10 in the rejection points over 2009-10 in the rejection of the applications for reasons termed as 'others.'," the report said.

'Others' are reasons which are not included in the exemption clauses given in the law.

"This calls for scrutiny and closer introspection by public authorities to 'ascertain and identify

The provisions other that those in sections 8(1),9,11 and 24 being used for rejecting the requesting information; since there are no other exemption clauses stipulated in the Act for rejecting a request for information," the report said.