DNA: Mumbai: Wednesday, August 01, 2018.
Petitioners
who have approached the Supreme Court for the appointment of information
commissioners said they will now file an affidavit on a recent advertisement
related to their appointments. The petitioners and other RTI activist said the
central government's ad for appointing information commissioners seemed more in
tune with the proposed amendments to the RTI Act over what is to be followed as
per the Act.
As per the ad
and the notice on the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), "The
salary, allowances and other terms and conditions of service of the information
commissioners shall be as specified at the time of the appointment of the
selected candidates." The proposed amendments were to be applicable to
both central and state governments.
"With
what they have done, it seems that they still intend to amend the RTI Act and
push it through without pre-legislative consultation. It seems they want
unsuitable people who are clerks. Unless they mention the salary and tenure,
who will even want to apply. It seems to be a precursor to further amendments
and what they intend to do with other independent statutory bodies," said
Shailesh Gandhi, former central information commissioner.
As per the
RTI Act, the salary of the chief commissioner is on par with the chief election
commissioner and their tenures are fixed for five years unless they cross the
age of 65 or whichever is earlier.
"We will
file a fresh affidavit on the issue. In the last hearing, the government was
told to give an affidavit on how many posts it will fill, the process and time
frame and what happened to an earlier advertisement on the issue," said
Anjali Bhardwaj, an RTI activist.
Venkatesh
Nayak, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), said, "There were
already protests and we were sending postcards to the government. We are also
whetting if the government can completely scrap the amendments instead of
deferring them."
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