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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Supreme Court seeks details of RTI panel vacancies

Supreme Court seeks details of RTI panel vacancies

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published Published on Jul 8, 2021   modified Modified on Jul 24, 2021

-The Telegraph

The court was hearing a joint PIL filed by Anjali Bharadwaj, Col Lokesh Batra and Amrita Johri complaining about the openings resulting in a massive backlog of cases

The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted four weeks to the Centre and states to come out with details of vacancies of information commissioners amid complaints that governments across the country are seeking to dilute the transparency law by the keeping the posts vacant.

The bench of Justices Abdul Nazeer and Krishna Murari asked additional solicitor-general Madhavi Divan appearing for the Centre to place on record the updated status report on vacancies in the Central Information Commission (CIC) and State Information Commissions (SIC).

The court was hearing a joint PIL filed by RTI activists Anjali Bharadwaj, Col Lokesh Batra and Amrita Johri complaining about the large-scale vacancies resulting in a massive backlog of cases.

Appearing for the petitioners, advocate Prashant Bhushan accused the Centre of conducting the appointment process in an opaque manner so that even the leader of the Opposition, who is part of the selection committee headed by the Prime Minister, is not given any details on the criteria for short-listing the names.

Bhushan said the vacancies were not confined to the CIC alone but also affected the State Information Commissions of Maharashtra, Odisha, Karnataka and Bengal.

Bhushan submitted that despite repeated observations and directions from the apex court against filling up the posts with bureaucrats, the Union government had not made the selection process transparent till date.

“They have not placed either the names of the candidates or the selection criteria on record. More than 300 people applied, but they short-listed only seven persons without specifying the criteria for short-listing the names,” he said.

According to Bhushan, the Centre was keen on keeping the posts either vacant or filling them up with “party supporters”, thereby destroying the very purpose of the transparency law.

The bench had initially granted six weeks to the Centre and states to file their affidavits, but modified the order to four weeks on Bhushan’s insistence.

The three activists had in October last year sought an urgent direction to the Centre to fill up the six vacancies in the CIC on account of which over 36,000 complaints/appeals under the Right to Information Act were pending adjudication.

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The Telegraph, 8 July, 2021, https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/supreme-court-seeks-details-of-rti-panel-vacancies/cid/1821636


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