Saswati Mukherjee, TNN, Jun 14, 2010, 04.10am IST
HYDERABAD: It’s most likely going to be a fixed match at the Andhra Pradesh Information Commission (APIC). With not only chairman C D Arha retiring but the other three members laying down office by November, a deal has been worked out by chief minister Rosaiah with leader of opposition Chandrababu Naidu, suggest highly placed sources. As part of this deal, Rosaiah’s principal secretary Jannat Hussain will be the new chief but Naidu will be able to get ‘men of his choice’ as information commissioners.
Under the statute, the appointment of chief information commissioner (CIC) and other information commissioners (ICs) has to be approved by the leader of opposition. “While this provision was made to ensure that only candidates of high stature make it to the post, Rosaiah and Naidu are proving to be smarter and doing a deal,” a senior bureaucrat said. TOI’s attempts to contact Naidu for the last three weeks on this issue have proved futile. The rank of an information commissioner is equivalent to that of the chief secretary, while the chief is equal in status to that of an election commissioner.
That the law does not provide for any special qualifications for the post of the information commissioners makes the job of match fixing simpler. The qualifications of commissioner is that they should be men of eminence in their field. But it is not defined who can be qualified to be an eminent man.
“They become eminent only after being appointed to the commission,” chuckles RTI activist C J Karira.
Under the law, Andhra Pradesh can have 10 information commissioners besides the CIC. However, there are presently only three members. Last time around, when they were appointed in 2005, then chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy had proved to be too wily for Naidu. The latter had at that time sent a list of ten candidates of his choice but YSR managed to jettison them. In the event, at least two of the members appointed were of very modest stature. The claim of one of them - K Sudhakar Rao- was that he had been in engineering college in Gulbarga around the time that YSR was studying medicine there and that he was a pal of the advisor of the chief minister K V P Ramachandra Rao. Little wonder that on the web site of the information commission his credentials are presented as “participation in student activities in college and school days’’ and an “interest in management of industries.”
Analysts point out that the Right to Information Act (RTI) was brought on the book to deepen the traditions of democracy but the appointment of such nondescript persons is making a mockery of the institution. In most states, information commissions have been packed with retired bureaucrats, but when persons of no credentials like Sudhakar Rao are appointed, the retired officials look better, they say.
However, RTI and citizen activists contend that retired officials whose entire life has been spent in denying information to the public are poor choices for the post. They feel that officials in their new avatar can hardly rise up to the challenge of their new positions. Thus they prefer really distinguished civil society members to be members of the information commission.
“We are asking people to lobby that members of civil society become information commissioners in the next round of appointments,” said Krishnaraj Rao, RTI activist.
Activists have created websites wherein citizens are being asked to ‘apply’ for the posts across the state commissions. With the RTI kicked off in 2005, in most states vacancies have arisen in information commissions. “The idea is to create a pool of eligible persons,” Rao told TOI.
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