The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Union government’s Department of Personnel and Training as well as states to furnish a timeline to fill up vacancies in the central information commission and various state information commissions, according to Bar and Bench.
In November last year, Newslaundry had reported that state commissions in at least four states, namely Jharkhand, Telangana, Tripura and Goa, had remained defunct with neither commissioners nor chief commissioners.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and NK Singh, which was hearing a PIL filed by RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj and other petitioners, also directed the chief secretaries of all states to file compliance affidavits on the process to fill up vacancies in the SICs.
“State chief secretaries shall file an affidavit as to when the vacancies are filled and what process is filled. But if the process is not followed as per judgment laid down then we will take up those individual cases,” said Justice Surya Kant, according to Bar and Bench.
The court ordered the competent authorities to appoint the selected members within two weeks. It also instructed the chief secretaries to inform about the current number of vacancies in the commissions.
Addressing the bench, the petitioners, who had also filed a similar plea in 2023 against various posts lying vacant in the CIC as well as the SICs, reiterated concerns about lack of information commissioners making the right to information defunct.
Commenting on how non-functional information commissions were triggering a rise in the number of pending RTI applications, India’s first chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah had earlier told Newslaundry that “the information commission was set up to expedite the whole process. That is why it was not left to the courts.”
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