The Hindu: Hyderabad: Monday, April 24, 2017.
SC
nullifies appointment of 4 information commissioners.
The fate of
the AP State Information Commission hangs in the balance after a recent Supreme
Court ruling declaring the appointment of four information commissioners
invalid.
Currently,
only one information commissioner, Vijaya Babu, is active and he too will demit
office next month. Legal experts are concerned that the information commission
is heading to be a defunct body unless both state governments take a decision
soon.
“The law does
not provide for absence of information commissioners,” said a reputed lawyer
well versed with the RTI Act. “A commission without a chief information
commissioner is almost equal to a court without a judge. There are no
alternatives mentioned in the act as no caretaker or incharge chief
commissioners are allowed to run the show.” However, he said that the orders
passed by the information commissioners whose appointments were struck down
were still legal. RTI activists want to put pressure on both state governments
to appoint the right candidates.
“We have
written to AP and Telangana governments to fill up the posts of state
information commissioners,” said Padmanabha Reddy, Secretary of Forum for Good
Governance. “In case both state government decide to constitute their own
information commissions, the process might take a few months as appointment of
search committee and other procedures have to be followed.” Mr. Reddy said that
if the state governments failed to act then they would approach governor and
also consider legal course of action.
Meanwhile,
RTI applicants and activists are worried that pendency rate would increase if
the situation continued. “The public information officers in various state
government officers are not taking the RTI applications. The reason is that
they know that the commission’s functioning has become weak. This is not good
for the transparency of the system,” said G. Srinivas Rao, an RTI activist from
the city.
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