New Delhi: After Chief Information Commissioner Bimal Julka retired earlier this week, the Central Information Commission was left once again without a head even though the Supreme Court issued clear directions to the Centre last year to start the process of appointments to the panel a few months before a post is due to fall vacant.
Additionally, with the Centre yet to fill the posts of four information commissioners, the commission is now left with just six ICs as against a sanctioned strength of eleven.
Right to Information activists, who have been campaigning and filing court cases to get the Centre to comply with the norms of filling up vacancies in the CIC see the decline in the strength as an attempt to weaken the RTI and the transparency movement.
‘Centre trying to undermine RTI Act’
Anjali Bhardwaj of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, who was one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court along with Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd) and Amrita Johri, accused the BJP government at the Centre of “trying to undermine the RTI Act & frustrate people’s ability to seek information to hold the government to account”.
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Bhardwaj also recalled how, in its February 2019 judgment, the apex court had “categorically stated that if the CIC does not have a Chief Information Commissioner or required strength of commissioners, it adversely affects the functioning of the RTI Act and frustrates people’s right to know.”
‘No Information Commissioner appointed without court intervention since May 2014’
Stating that “not a single Information Commissioner has been appointed by the government since it came to power in May 2014, without citizens having to approach courts,” Bhardwaj said, now “in flagrant violation of the orders of the Supreme Court, the Central Government has failed to make requisite appointments to the CIC.”
With the chief commissioner retiring and the commission having five vacancies now, Bhardwaj wondered how the panel would deal with over 35,000 pending cases which it was already laden with.
Four vacancies of ICs not filled despite SC order
Bhardwaj added that the Supreme Court had directed that the process of filling vacancies should commence one or two months prior to the vacancy arising. But, the RTI activist lamented that “last year we had to again move the Supreme Court as there were four vacancies in the CIC and the government was not making appointments.”
She also pointed out that in its order in December 2019, the SC had directed the government to fill all vacancies within a period of three months but “even that order has not been complied with till date.”
Pendency of cases rises by over 12,000 since case was filed in SC
Meanwhile, Batra said there were a total of 35,880 cases in the CIC as of the morning of August 28. Of these, he said, 31,070 were appeals and 4,810 were complaints.
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Pointing out how the pendency of cases has increased due to persistent vacancies in the commission, he said when the case was filed before the Supreme Court on April 25, 2018, around 23,500 matters were pending. However, the rise over 12,000 cases over the last two years clearly indicated that the Centre had avoided putting in the right kind of effort to rectify the situation.
Batra also charged that “there was no transparency in appointments” to the commission and that posts were not being advertised at least three months before falling vacant.
Earlier this year, he had also shared copies of documents, obtained via RTI, which showed that the Centre had made the wrong submission in its status report before the apex court by claiming that the process of appointments was ‘completed’ even though four vacancies still remained.
‘Search Committee should expedite appointments’
Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative also questioned the delay in appointments and why the Centre was allowing the number of vacancies to rise. “This will hamper the smooth day to day functioning of the commission as the Chief IC is, by law, responsible for the administration and general superintendence of the Commission,” he said.
He added that the government has not complied with the Supreme Court directive that the process of recruitment must commence well in advance of the creation of vacancies. “The process of filling up the remaining vacant IC post has also stalled after the coronavirus epidemic started. With the CIC working at barely half its sanctioned strength, the pendency of cases is likely to cross the 36,000 mark soon,” he cautioned.
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“This amounts to carrying the concept of minimum government to ridiculous extremes. The selection committee must meet immediately to finalise recommendations to the vacant IC posts as the process had already been initiated earlier. Similarly, the process of calling for fresh applications to fill up the vacant Chief IC post must be started forthwith,” he demanded.