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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | State seeks amendment in RTI Act to appoint officiating CIC by Jasneet Bindra

State seeks amendment in RTI Act to appoint officiating CIC by Jasneet Bindra

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published Published on Aug 31, 2010   modified Modified on Aug 31, 2010


The Punjab government has sought an amendment to the RTI Act for appointment of officiating chief information commissioner (CIC).

The state has written to the Ministry of Personnel, Grievances and Pensions and the Ministry of Law and Justice, saying that amendment in the Act be carried out so that there is clarity regarding status, salary and allowances given to the officiating CIC.

At present, an officiating CIC is appointed through a routine executive order, which, besides being questionable in itself, creates complications regrading the status and remuneration, the state told both the ministries. However, in response to Punjab’s suggestion, Under-Secretary (RTI), Ministry of Personnel, Grievances and Pensions, R K Girdhar stated that the government was examining the suitability of an amendment.

The Punjab government took up the issue after state information commissioner (SIC) P K Verma, who officiated as the CIC for about ten months, stated that he was entitled to “salary, allowances and other terms and conditions of service laid down for the CIC under Section 16 of the RTI Act”.

He had written this in a letter dated, October 1, 2008, to the then secretary, IT, Punjab, Narinderjit Singh, in which he informed him that he has been officiating as the CIC since August 7, 2008.

When he got no response, he wrote to Punjab IT Minister Adesh Partap Singh Kairon in February 2009, asserting that even after five months, the orders of the government for his appointment have not been amended to allow his request based on the principle of “equal pay for equal work”.

The government then told Verma that his request could not be acceded to on the basis of a precedent set in case of acting chairman of the Human Rights Commission because in the RTI Act there was no provision for giving an SIC pay of a CIC, whereas in the Protection of Human Rights Act there was provision for appointment of an acting chairman.

However, Verma then clarified that there was no such provision in the Protection of Human Rights Act, too. “The absence of provision in the RTI Act cannot be given as a reason for not sanctioning me the pay and allowances of a CIC,” he wrote to the then Secretary, IT, in May 2009.

He added that accepting his request does not require an “enabling provision in the RTI Act, but only an executive decision based on equity and justice”


The Indian Express, 31 August, 2010, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/State-seeks-amendment-in-RTI-Act-to-appoint-officiating-CIC/674613


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