The
Times of India: Ahmedabad: Tuesday, 22 December 2015.
Gujarat high
court (HC) on Monday directed the state government to appoint two more
information commissioners in the State Information Commission for speedy
disposal of cases and appeals filed under the Right to Information Act (RTI).
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Jayant Panchal
and Justice V M Pancholi ordered for having posts of a chief information
commissioner along with three other commissioners within two months' time. The
order came in response to a PIL filed by Praful Desai of NGO Jagate Raho from
Vadodara.
Desai sought
direction for filling up four vacant posts of information commissioners citing
pendency of over 6,000 cases of RTI in the commission for the past couple of
years.
In fact, it
was on Desai's petition that the HC had last year ordered to appoint
information commissioners. Accordingly , B G Panchasara and Shridevi Shukla
were appointed on the posts. But Desai him self objected to the appointments on
the ground that the duo was not eligible for the post and filed another
petition in the HC.
On February
12, the HC held that appointments of Panchasara and Shukla as in formation
commissioners we re illegal on the ground that the consultation process adopted
in appointment was not pro per. The state government removed both of them from
the post.Since then, the posts had been vacant and backlog of cases in the
commission continued to mount.
The bench has
this time asked the state government to initiate the process for appointment in
10 days' ti me and complete it in two months.
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