CIC to get full strength soon; relief for RTI pleas.

Daily Pioneer:Tuesday, January 24, 2012.

After inordinate delay, three out of five vacant posts of information commissioner are likely to be filled by the end of this month as the appointment process has picked up momentum. The Central Information Commission (CIC) officials are hopeful that these appointments would help in reducing the number of pending RTI cases which have piled up in the recent months.

“We are told by the Government that the selection process is at a very advanced stage. We have been given the impression that three out of the five vacant posts would be filled within a week,” said sources. The CIC has been functioning at half of its strength for over a year resulting in sharp increase in the number of pending cases.

Till mid-October, around the time when Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra had requested the Government to speed up the process, 17,000 cases were pending with CIC. The pendency has shot up to over 23,000 cases, increasing at the rate of about 2,000 cases per month.

The sources said the cause of delay in making appointment lies in the absence of a transparent selection process of the information commissioners. The Government too is adopting a cautious approach after its bitter experience in the appointment of PJ Thomas as Chief Vigilance Commissioner last year.

There were eight information commissioners till September 2010 when National Commission for Minorities Chairperson Wajahat Habibullah was the Chief Information Commissioner. However, with the retirement of three commissioners subsequently, the CIC has been left with one chief information commissioner (Mishra) and five information commissioners - Annapurna Dixit, Shailesh Gandhi, ML Sharma, Deepak Sandhu and Sushma Singh.

The appointment of chief information commissioner and information commissioners is similar to that of the CVC. One chief information commissioner and not more than 10 information commissioners are selected by an Appointment Committee comprising the Prime Minister (Chair), Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and one Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the PM.

According to a survey conducted among State and Central information commissioners by an NGO Parivartan, 66% of them wanted a transparent selection process. The survey found that information commissioners had reservations about the current appointment process.