The Hans India: Hyderabad: Friday, April 21, 2017.
The decision
of the Supreme Court upholding the High Court order setting aside the
appointments of four State Information Commission members is likely to create
new problems for both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and end up in a peculiar
situation where both the states may not have any Information commissioners and
the commission becoming defunct.
Even three
years after bifurcation, both states continue to have only one State
Information Commission whereas to promote transparency and accountability in
every public authority each state should have separate commissions.
In the
backdrop of this situation with the apex court upholding the High Court order,
four State Information Commission members, V Venkateswarlu, Thantiiya Kumari,
Imtiyaz Ahmed and M Vijaya Nirmala will be unseated and of the remaining two
commissioners M Ratan would retire on April 22 and P Vijaya Babu will be laying
down the office on May 15.
As per the
act, the Appointments Committee is headed by the Chief Minister including the
Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly and one Cabinet Minister
nominated by the Chief Minister.
Since there
are no separate committees for the two states, the question now is who will
chair the appointment committee?
The
appointment committee will have to form a search committee and then finally
select the commissioners. Hence unless both the states take up the matter as
top priority, the State Information Commission will become a defunct body.
According to
M Padmanabha Reddy, Secretary of the Forum for Good Governance, if both the
governments do not take steps to constitute separate State Information
Commissions and appoint new commissioners, it would not be possible to
implement the RTI Act.