RTI activists write to President

Business Standard: New Delhi: Friday, 12 September 2014.

RTI activists and former Information Commissioners today urged the President Pranab Mukherjee to take immediate steps to appoint the Chief Information Commissioner in the Central Information Commission (CIC).

In a letter to the President, the activists said that it is a matter of grave concern that the post of the Chief Information Commissioner in the CIC has been lying vacant since August 22, 2014.

"The effective functioning of adjudicators under the RTI Act - the Information Commissions - is critical for the health of the transparency regime in the country. It is therefore a matter of grave concern that the post of the Chief Information Commissioner in the Central Information Commission of India has been lying vacant since August 22, 2014. It is for the first time since the constitution of the Central Information Commission in 2005, that the Commission is headless.

"Already there is a huge backlog in the Central Information Commission with close to 25,000 appeals and complaints pending in the Commission.

"Often people have to wait for more than a year for their appeals and complaints to be heard. The lack of a Chief Information Commissioner will cause the pendency in the Commission to further increase," the letter to the President said.

The letter said RTI Act has strengthened participatory democracy by enabling the citizens of India to monitor and access services throughout the country.

"The multiple uses of the Act to improve government functioning are so huge that they defy enumeration. The implementation of the RTI law is seen as the one stated intent of the government to lay itself open to scrutiny, and therefore accountability," said RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj.

The letter is signed by Aruna Roy, Deepak Sandhu, Maja Daruwala, Nikhil Dey, Shailesh Gandhi, Shekhar Singh, Venkatesh Nayak, Wajahat Habibullah and also Bhardwaj.