Times of India: Ranchi: Monday,
20 July 2020.
More
than 8,000 RTI applications are pending for disposal at the State Information
Commission, which is lying defunct after the post of chief information
commissioner and five information commissioners remained vacant for many
months. The term of the only information commissioner, Himanshu Shekar, who was
handling the cases since long, ended in May this year, rendering the commission
which is a constitutional body mandated under the Right to Information (RTI)
Act, 2005, non-functional.
Speaking
to TOI, Ravikant Paswan, central president of Bharatiya Suchna Adhikaar Manch
(BSAM), a national rights group working in the field of RTI, said he had
recently written a letter to chief minister Hemant Soren urging him to fill the
vacant posts on a priority basis.
Paswan
said, “RTI is a crucial tool for enforcing transparency and accountability in
governance, but in Jharkhand, it has turned into a toothless tiger. The
government should activate it immediately to prove that it is for zero
tolerance towards corruption.”
“Due to
non-availability of information commissioners, cases are piling up for
disposal. Over 8,000 RTI applications and cases are pending for disposal and it
will increase every day but no one seems to be concerned,” said Paswan, who in
December last year led a statewide dharna outside the Raj Bhavan for
appointments to the vacant posts in the commission.
The
recruitment process to fill vacant posts was stopped midway after notifying the
process in January this year. “After the new government was formed, the state
personnel department on January 4 issued a notification to fill up the vacant
posts, but the process was halted midway for reasons best known to the
government,” Paswan added.
Meanwhile,
secretary of the state personnel department, Ajoy Kumar, was not available for
comments. One of his subordinate officers on condition of anonymity said, “The
recruitment process had to be put on hold for some technical issues.
Thereafter, the government’s focus shifted to the Covid fight, but it will soon
be set in order.”
.JPG)
.JPG)
