The Asian Age: New Delhi: Sunday, July 29, 2018.
The Supreme
Court on Friday expressed its displeasure over the inordinate delay in filling
the vacancies of information commissions at the Centre and in eight states
inclouding West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana resulting in huge pendency
of cases.
A bench of
Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan hearing a PIL filed by Anjali Bharadwaj
and others questioned the states for not filing their response to the notice
earlier this month regarding the vacancies in information commissions set up
under the RTI Act.
After hearing
counsel Prashant Bhushan, the Bench took serious note of the problem of
vacancies in the information commissions. The counsel presented the status of
vacancies in information commissions.
It was
submitted that the Centre had invited applications to fill vacancies in the
Central Information Commission by publishing an advertisement. The petitioners
pointed out that the advertisement did not mention the number of posts for
which applications were invited. Further, the Centre had issued such an advertisement
in September 2016 also but had failed to fill any of the vacancies. Mr. Bhushan
said currently in the CIC there are 4 vacancies even though nearly 24,000
appeals/complaints are pending before it. He said four more commissioners,
including the chief will retire by December 1, 2018.
The court
expressed it displeasure on the delay in filling vacancies and directed the
additional solicitor general Pinky Anand, appearing for the Centre to file an
affidavit with details of the number of vacancies that will be filled, the time
frame within which the vacancies will be filled.
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