Times of India: Ahmedabad: Sunday, January 12, 2014.
A bench of
the Gujarat high court, on Friday, asked the state government to fill, within a
month, two vacant posts of Additional Information Commissioner (AIC) in the
Chief Information Commissioner's (CIC) office at Gandhinagar.
The bench
consisting of Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice JB Pardiwala gave
the order in response to a PIL filed by Praful Desai, a Vadodara-based senior
citizen who appeared in court as party in person.
"In view
of the backlog of thousands of RTI appeals, the high court has asked the state
government to fill the vacant posts according to the order issued on August 12,
2012," said Desai. He further said that the court had given this order in
response to his petition seeking implementation of the court's ruling of August
12, 2012.
Desai, who
runs an NGO, Jagte Raho, had, in 2012, filed a PIL in which he had complained
that though RTI appeals had been piling up in the office of the CIC, the state
government had not filled the statutory posts of AIC.
On August 12,
2012, the high court had asked the state government to immediately appoint two
AICs. The court had further directed the government to continue with the
additional posts so long as the number pendency of appeals was not reduced to a
state where fresh appeals could be disposed of within two months of their
filing, if not earlier.
However, the
state government did not fill the posts by citing an apex court order which
ruled that the state should appoint a judicial member as AIC. This order,
however,was struck down when a review petition was filed against it.