Times of India: Panaji: Monday, June 10, 2013.
The Goa state
information commission might become functional within a month as the file for
the appointment of the Goa state chief information commissioner and the state
information commissioner has been moved to the government for final action,
official sources said.
The
government has received 22 applications for chief information commissioner and
29 applications for state information commissioner.
The post of
state information commissioner fell vacant on September 13, 2012, and the post
of chief state information commissioner fell vacant on July 30, 2012.
The post of
state information commissioner was filled on August 9, 2012, by Pradeep Paudwal
but he quit the post on September 13, 2012.
Last time,
the government had set up two committees for the selection of these two posts.
One was a pre-selection committee headed by the chief secretary and included
the secretary of information and publicity and one more government secretary.
This
committee shortlisted a few names and forwarded them to the government. As per
the RTI Act, there is one more committee which comprises the chief minister,
one cabinet minister and the leader of opposition. The shortlisted names were
sent to the second committee which selected one name and sent it for the
government's approval.
While that
was the procedure followed during the appointment of the last state information
commissioner, officials are unclear if the government will adopt another
procedure this time.
If the
government does choose to follow the same procedure, then it has to now
re-constitute the first committee. But officials are confident that both the
appointments are possible within a month.
Meanwhile,
the pendency of cases before the Goa state information commission swelled to
1,160. Of these, pending appeals are 534, pending complaints are 497 and
pending penalty cases are 129.
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