Indian
Express: Kochi: Thursday, 17 December 2015.
Several
prominent persons including retired IAS officers, college professors and
lawyers have applied for the four Information Commissioners after the last date
of filing the applications ended on Tuesday. After long delay, the government
was forced to invite applications for the four vacant posts following a Kerala
High Court order on November 23.
The High
Court judgement by the division bench headed by Chief Justice Ashok Bhushan and
Justice A M Shaffique came on a petition filed by M A Pookoya, state
coordinator of National Campaign for People’s Right to Information It is learnt
that Dijo Kappen, the managing trustee of a Kottayam-based Centre for Consumer
Education, Adv. Abdulla from Aluva, Dr G Balachandran, retd professor of SD
College Alappuzha, M D Sunita Begam, a first rank holder in LLM, who retired
from Cochin University, Adv D B Binu, Anwar Sahib, retired SP from
Thiruvananthapuram are among the applicants.
A committee
comprising the Chief Secretary and General Administration secretary will
scrutinise the candidates. The names are then forwarded to a high-powered
committee comprising Chief Minister, Industries Minister and the Opposition
leader, who will send a list comprising three times the vacancies (in this case
names of 12 persons) to the Governor.
“The
Governor, as an appointing authority, can select any four names from the list,”
explained M T Thomas, member, state committee of NCPRI Kerala. According to
Pookoya, the HC has asked the state government to fill the vacancies within six
weeks. “So, we expect the four vacancies to be filled by January 15,” he said.
In Kerala, there are five Information Commissioners and a Chief Information
Commissioner (Sibi Mathews). Thomas said the fifth Information Commissioner K
Natarajan is under suspension since November 9, 2012. “It was revealed through
an RTI that the suspended Information Commissioner is drawing subsistence
allowance as applicable to the Chief Secretary of the state, which is at
present `1.6 lakh per month. Thus, he had already drawn nearly `60 lakh
benefits from the state exchequer, without any work,” said Thomas.
According to
him, as on date, more than 11,000 second appeals and complaints are pending
before the State Information Commissioner for disposal.Thomas pointed out that
among the earlier State Information Commissioners, except a very few, “there
was no merit and all the appointments were done under political considerations.
For instance, Sony Thengamom, a retired Information Commissioner’s
qualification was “LLB Completed”, he alleged.
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