Yahoo India News: National: Thursday, June 07, 2018.
Unless you
are a serious researcher, whistle-blower, a curious citizen or have nothing
else to do, you will never ever care about the Right To Information Act. And
even if you do, you may never care about who is the Information Commissioner
is, what his salary or status are, and where he stands in hierarchy.
Even I
didn’t.
Until I
started researching for a film on Lal Bahadur Shastri’s mysterious death.
Whether I found any useful information or not, what kind of difficulties I had
to face to even file an RTI application is a subject of another discussion, but
what I came to know about the status of Central Information Commissioners and
Chief Information Commissioners baffled me.
Not many
people know that currently the RTI Act confers the status of Supreme Court
judges on Central Information Commissioners/Chief Information Commissioner of
States. I always thought that only the President, Vice President, Prime
Minister, central Cabinet Ministers, Speakers of the House and Supreme Court
judges have extraordinary status for the responsibility they are given to serve
and protect the State of India.
For a CIC to
have the same status as Supreme Court Judges is anomalous on several counts.
The Supreme
Court is not just the apex court of the country, it is also an integral pillar
of our democracy alongside the Parliament (Legislature) & Union Government
(Executive). The Supreme Court is also the custodian of the Constitution. Every
judgement passed by the Supreme Court judges is final, irreversible and becomes
the law of the land.
The destiny
of our country and its citizens can change with one judgement of a Supreme
Court judge. Even the orders of the executive can be challenged, reversed or
stopped by an SC judge. Not in the case of a CIC.
To understand
why CICs cannot have the same status as a SC judge, let’s look at the
Information Commission. First, the Information Commission is not a
constitutional body. Unlike the Supreme
Court, the Information Commission came into existence by an Act of Parliament.
In fact, unlike the constitutional body empowered by Article 324 of the
Constitution, the CIC is only a statutory body handling requests and appeals of
citizens for information under the control of public authorities. It is a
statutory commission like NCDRC (National Consumer Disputes Redressal
Commission), CERC, Competition Commission of India, et cetera.
In none of
these are their commissioners or members either equated with or given the
status of a SC judge. CIC/ICs have a limited mandate, given to them by
Parliament, of just protecting a statutory right and that is the Right to
Information.
Unlike SC
judges, the orders of the Information Commissioners are not final and can be
challenged and reversed in high courts. Thus, in the hierarchy of institutions
and their power, Information Commissions have to be placed below the High
Court. But, strangely, the Chief Information Commissioner of State Information
Commission is given a status superior to
that of the Chief Justice of the High Court. This is quiet bizarre as the
orders of the State Information Commissions can be challenged before the High
Court.
Further,
every state has an Information Commission, and equating Chief Information Commissioners
of all states with Supreme Court Judges is not just improper and inappropriate,
it’s absolutely illogical.
Also, in most
cases the state information commissioner is an ex-bureaucrat retiring as an
additional secretary not even having reached the level of a secretary while in
service but on appointment as state information commissioner, he suddenly comes
to the same level as of a Supreme Court judge. This is beyond any rationality
or professional fairness.
Then why are
CIC equated to SC judges and given the same status and perks as them?
Anyone with a
little knowledge and understanding of our Constitution and the democratic
set-up can tell that there is something wrong and unconstitutional here. What
surprises me is that no one has raised this issue. In a country, where legal
activism is faster than the bullet train, how come this anomaly went
undetected?
When I
further researched and connected the dots, it didn’t surprise me at all. This
is not an exception. It’s a political game played by political parties to
contrive and manoeuvre the system for their vested interests and to ensure
their hold over the system.
.JPG)
.JPG)
