Economic Times: New Delhi: Monday, December 28, 2015.
The
appointment of three Information Commissioners at the Central Information Commission
will be made only after the Supreme Court's verdict on a petition filed by the
Centre in the matter.
"The
government will wait for the Supreme Court decision in the case which is
tentatively listed for January 4," a senior official in Department of
Personnel and Training (DoPT) said.
The CIC,
which is mandated to hear complaints and appeals from information seekers under
the RTI Act, comprises a chief Commissioner and ten Information Commissioners.
At present, there are seven Information Commissioners--Basant Seth,
Yashovardhan Azad, Sharat Sabharwal, Manjula Parasher, M A Khan Yusufi,
Madabhushanam Sridhar Acharyulu and Sudhir Bhargava.
The
government has been facing criticism from RTI activists over the delay in
filling up the vacancies in the transparency watchdog.
The DoPT had
in 2014 called for the advertisements to fill vacant posts of Chief Information
Commissioner and Commissioners. Instead of filling all the posts from the
applications received in response to these advertisements, the DoPT in
September this year again invited applications for the posts.
In between, a
panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on December 16 this year
selected former Defence Secretary R K Mathur as the Chief Information
Commissioner, breaking from the convention of appointing senior-most serving
Information Commissioner as chief of the transparency panel.
After a High
Court November six order that directed the central government to appoint CIC
and ICs within six weeks from among the 553 applicants who had applied for the
posts in response to its advertisements last year, the DoPT moved the apex
court challenging it.
The Prime
Minister-led selection committee has Finance MinisterArun Jaitley and leader of
Congress Party in Lok Sabha, Mallikarjuna
Kharge, as its members.
As per RTI
Act, CIC is appointed by the President on the recommendation of the selection
committee.
The Central Information
Commission had been headless twice since the BJP government came into power in
2014. Earlier, it was without a chief for nearly 10 months after completion of
the tenure of the then Chief Information Commissioner Rajiv Mathur in August
2014.
A total of
33,613 complaints and appeals are pending at the Commission, as per latest data.
.JPG)
.JPG)
