New Delhi, Dec 3 (IANS): The number of Right to Information (RTI) requests has seen a 120 percent surge in the financial year 2013-2014 and the numbers will continue to rise in the next year as well, latest data reveals.

Information requests received until March 2014 have shot up to 16,103 compared to the 7,335 requests received in the previous financial year, information received by RTI activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd.) showed.

In the past seven years, RTI requests hovered around the 7,000 mark in the past four years and averaged about 2,000 a year in the previous three.

In the current financial year, 9,580 applications have already been received till October.

Appeals filed to the chief information commissioner have also seen a similar increase of 110 percent. The number of appeals filed went up to 1,940, up from 923 in the previous year.

If applicants are not provided with information that they seek or they are unsatisfied with the information that they receive, the RTI Act has a provision for filing an appeal within 30 days.

A total of 1,001 appeals have been received in the first seven months of the current financial year.

The post of chief information commissioner, who is the head of the Central Information Commission, has been vacant since Aug 23, when the previous commissioner Rajeev Mathur, retired.