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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | 90% of Information Commissioners are civil servants -Vinita Deshmukh

90% of Information Commissioners are civil servants -Vinita Deshmukh

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published Published on May 30, 2018   modified Modified on May 30, 2018
-MoneyLife.in

Recently and at last, Maharashtra has appointed a Chief Information Commissioner under the Right to Informaation (RTI) Act, and it is no surprise that he happens to be a former bureaucrat.  Sumit Mallik, who just retired as Chief Secretary, takes over the chair, which was lying vacant since the last several months.

The trend of appointing civil servants for the posts of CICs and Informaction Commissioners (ICs) has continued ever since the implementation of the RTI Act in 2005. This is in sharp defiance of Sections 12(5) and 15(5) of the Central RTI Act, which comprise a list of fields of experience and expertise from which candidates – men and women – may be chosen for filling up the posts . Section 12(5) of the Jammu & Kashmir RTI Act also contains a similar list for the guidance of the J&K State Government.
 
Besides, the appointment of Mallik is seen as contempt of the Supreme Court order in Namit Sharma Vs Union of India case in 2013. Pune-based RTI activist Vijay Kumbhar, who is contemplating legal intervention in this matter says, “The Supreme Court Order clearly states that the procedure of appointment of CIC should start three months before the retirement of the incumbent CIC. Also, eminence record of the candidate must be thoroughly scrutinised and the procedure should be transparent. Despite this, in a reversal mode, the Maharashtra government has defied the SC by flouting all these directives. It almost seems as if the state government was waiting for Mallik to retire and so kept the vacany pending for several months.”
 
Venkatesh Nayak, research scholar of RTI and coordinator of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), says, “It appears that the Governments’ trend of preferring retired civil servants to head Information Commissions has only strengthened over the years. However, the number of retired officers from the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) appointed to these posts has not come down despite the Supreme Court advising the Governments to look beyond this catchment area of candidates in 2013.”
 
The fields of expertise mentioned in both laws for appointing as IC are- law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism, mass media and administration and governance.

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MoneyLife.in, 16 May, 2018, https://www.moneylife.in/article/90-percentage-of-information-commissioners-are-civil-servants/54060.html


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