Indian
Express: Chennai: Tuesday, 28 April 2015.
State Chief
Information Commissioner (CIC) K S Sripathi, who held the post for nearly five
years, retired from the panel on Monday after attaining the age of 65. Sripathi
had taken over as the CIC on September 1, 2010 a day after he retired as the
Chief Secretary of the State.
At present
there are four serving State Information Commissioners Christopher Nelson (IPS
retd), P Thamilselvan, B Neelambikai and SF Akbar. All of them were appointed
as SICs on September 5, 2012.
The new Chief
Information Commissioner has to be chosen by a committee comprising Chief
Minister O Panneerselvam, Speaker P Dhanapal and Leader of Opposition,
Vijayakant. There are possibilities of
appointing any one of the present Information Commissioners as the new CIC.
Under the
Right to Information Act, 2005, the State government constituted the Tamil Nadu
Information Commission comprising of a CIC and two SICs on October 7, 2005.
Retired IAS
officer S Ramakrishnan was the first CIC of the Commission. He took over along
with two SICs on January 28, 2006. On April 10, 2008, the State government
increased the strength of the SICs from two to six.
The
appointment of Sripathi was mired with controversies.
The then
Leader of Opposition J Jayalalithaa termed Sripathi’s appointment as illegal. As Sripathi was being sworn in over four
years ago, the RTI activists staged protests outside the Raj Bhavan.
A few months
ago, when RTI activist and Satta Panchayat Iyakkam president Siva Ilango
appeared before him for a case, Sripathi insisted that he stand while the
hearing was on but Ilango refused stating that there was no such rule.
However,
Sripathi refused to hear him and went on hearing other cases. After many hours,
Ilango was arrested on a complaint that he was disrupting CIC Sripathi from discharging
his duties.
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