Times of India: Lucknow: Wednesday,
April 17, 2013.
The Lucknow
bench of the Allahabad High Court has directed the Uttar Pradesh government to
fill vacant posts of information commissioners in the State Information
Commission within three months and furnish the report before it. The court will
hear the matter after three months.
A division
bench of Chief Justice Shiva Kirti Singh and Justice DK Arora refuted Akhilesh
Yadav government's contention that it was not making appointments owing to
pendency of a review application in the Supreme Court. "There is no stay
or interim order on the said application and as such there is no hindrance in
the appointments," observed the judges while pointing that the
appointments would be governed by any order to be passed by the apex court on
the application.
Presently
there are 10 posts of information commissioners in UP, out of which eight are
lying vacant, whereas there is already a pendency more than 45,000 cases in the
commission. "The state of affairs if allowed to remain longer will deprive
people of a valuable right to obtain information from state machinery under
Right to Information Act," said the court.
The judges
had taken a suo motu cognizance of the situation as brought into light by an
English daily on March 22, 2013.The court had directed the state government to
reply about the delay in the appointments, directing its registry to list the
matter as a public interest litigation petition.
The apex
court had on September 13, 2012 passed a detailed verdict in case of Namita
Sharma versus Union of India providing different guidelines to make the RTI Act
constitutional and workable. In the judgment it also provided that the chief
information commissioners and information commissioners should be picked from
serving or retired judges of high courts and Supreme Court and lawyers having
at least 20 years of practice. The SC had directed the Centre to amend the RTI
Act in view of the directions. Dissatisfied with the directives soon after the
verdict, the central government preferred a review application to change
certain guidelines. The application is pending in the SC without any stay on
the verdict.
The state
government filed reply before the HC, pleading that Centre has not yet amended
the RTI Act as directed by the SC and also that it is waiting for the result on
the review application.
The judges
did not favour the UP government's view and said it must go ahead to make the
appointments following the provisions of RTI Act as well as the SC's September
13, 2012 judgement. "The appointments will be subject to further orders to
be passed by the SC on the pending review application," added the judges.
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