Business
Standard: New Delhi: Saturday, 17 January 2015.
A panel led
by Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth today met to draw up a shortlist of candidates
who are seeking appointment to the posts of chief information commissioner and
information commissioners at the Central Information Commission (CIC).
The search
committee scrutinised the credentials of 756 aspirants 203 for the post of
Chief Information Commissioner and 553 who are looking to be Information
Commissioners at the transparency panel, which has been working headless for
over four months now, official sources said.
The names of
the candidates shortlisted by the panel will be sent to the selection committee
chaired by the Prime Minister, which will then finalise candidates for
appointment, they said.
Besides Seth,
the committee has as its members the Additional Principal Secretary to the
Prime Minister, Secretary (Personnel), Home Secretary, Secretary (Department of
Expenditure) and Professor Ramesh Chand, Director of the National Centre for
Agricultural Economics and Policy.
In a
departure from the practice so far, the government did not appointed the
senior-most Information Commissioner (IC) in CIC as its chief after the
position fell vacant in late August and instead chose to advertise the vacancy.
Among the 203
applicants for the chief's post, 89 are bureaucrats and 37 are law experts
while 28 are from the field of management, 21 from science and technology, nine
from social service, three journalists, five from mass media, along with 11
others.
Among the
applicants for the post of Information Commissioner, 233 are in administration
and governance category, 98 in law, 70 in management, 64 from science and
technology field, 29 from journalism, 27 in social service and 13 in mass
media, along with 19 others.
CIC has been
operating without a chief ever since Chief Information Commissioner Rajiv
Mathur completed his tenure on August 22 of last year.
The chief of
CIC is appointed by the President upon the recommendation of a three-member
selection committee headed by the Prime Minister and comprising the Leader of
Opposition in Lok Sabha and a Union Cabinet Minister as its members.
At present,
there are seven Information Commissioners Vijai Sharma, Basant Seth,
Yashovardhan Azad, Sharat Sabharwal, Manjula Prasher, MA Khan Yusufi and Prof
Madabhushanam Sridhar Acharyulu -- as against its strength of 10. All the above
seven have applied for the post of Chief Information Commissioner.
CIC is
mandated to resolve appeals and complaints filed against government departments
or public authorities by information seekers under the Right to Information
(RTI) Act.
The vacancy
in CIC has led to the piling up of cases and, as per the latest data, a total
of 37,143 of them 29,706 appeals and 7,437 complaints are pending disposal by
the transparency watchdog.
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