Editor,
I wish to express my deep frustration with the Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC). The commission deserves serious public criticism. It never seems to learn from its past mistakes. This constitutional body appears drunk on power, overlooking the very roles and responsibilities laid down for it by the Constitution.
In August 2025, I filed an RTI application, seeking my marks statement and copies of my answer scripts for the APPSCCE 2024, in which I had reached the interview stage. I did not ask for any confidential, secret, or sensitive information – only my own evaluation records. When there was no response within the stipulated time, I filed a first appeal before the appellate authority in September 2025. It is now November, and I am yet to receive any reply from the commission.
This blatant disregard for my RTI request has left me stuck, haunted by questions about where I may have faltered and why I missed out on selection. The information I sought would have helped me assess my performance and improve. Instead, thanks to the commission’s silence, I am deprived of this right as well – as if wasting three crucial years of my life from 2022 to 2024 in the shadow of the paper leakage scam was not enough.
I am only asking for my personal information. The refusal to share even this basic data points to deeper, systemic problems within the APPSC: lack of accountability, absence of transparency, questionable fairness, and a sheer display of a superiority or ‘invincibility’ complex. One is forced to wonder what dark secrets and corrupt practices the commission may be hiding from the public.
Equally disturbing is the silence of the Arunachal Pradesh Information Commission (APIC), which is located just a few metres away from the APPSC office. The APIC remains a mute spectator to these unjust practices. It needs to be far more proactive. Candidates have repeatedly expressed their displeasure over how the APPSC handles RTI applications. What is the APIC doing? Why turn a blind eye to a problem that demands prompt intervention? Or is it content to be hand in glove in undermining the very legitimacy of the RTI Act, 2005?
Ironically, in October 2025, the APIC conducted ‘Right to Information Week’ at the state Legislative Assembly, where Governor KT Parnaik termed the RTI Act as “a law and living expression of democracy that helps deepen awareness, strengthen accountability and nurture the spirit of good governance in the state.” Yet, on the ground, this noble law is being hollowed out by the ‘invincible’ APPSC.
Finally, the public must understand that such denial of RTI has serious social, political, and bureaucratic consequences. The APPSC is entrusted with recruiting key bureaucrats and administrators for our state – from circle officers to teachers. Its recruits form the structural backbone of a young and aspirational Arunachal. We have already seen, during the paper leakage scam, the structural damage that can be caused when tainted candidates enter the system. If we remain silent now, we risk once again seeing fake circle officers, ADOs, teachers, and more in our institutions.
It is time to wake up and raise our voices before further damage is done.
APPSCCE 2024 interview-appeared candidate