New Delhi: If vacancies in the Central Information Commission (CIC) are not filled, it will become defunct from Monday, since all its commissioners are set to retire on 6 November according to a submission reportedly made in the Supreme Court.
The CIC has been headless since 3 October — following former Chief Information Commissioner Y.K. Sinha’s retirement — and had seven vacancies with only four commissioners working. However, one of the commissioners reportedly had his last working day Friday and the remaining three commissioners are set to retire Monday.
Under the Right to Information Act (RT), 2005, information commissions consist of a chief information commissioner and up to 10 information commissioners. According to Section 12 of the Act, the Chief Information Commissioner and other information commissioners are appointed by the President on the recommendation of a committee consisting of the Prime Minister (who shall be the chairperson of the committee), the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha and a Union cabinet minister to be nominated by the Prime Minister.
According to media reports, the CIC selection committee has met and new appointments are likely to be made soon.
Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convener of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information and founding member of Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS), blamed the vacancies on the “lack of political will” to make these appointments.
“For a long time, the CIC was working with just five commissioners, appointments were not made, and now, we’re looking at imminent retirement of all, leaving nobody in the commission. This is completely violating the spirit and letter of the RTI Act and shows a complete lack of political will because this is not something that is happening suddenly,” she told ThePrint.
Bhardwaj added: “These are routine retirements, and governments understand what role commissions play in the proper implementation of the RTI Act. So, one can’t put it down to anything but lack of political will.”
On 30 October, the Supreme Court also expressed its dissatisfaction with the failure of the states and the central government to fill up vacancies in the information commissions across the country.
This came while an SC bench comprising Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra was hearing a petition concerning these vacancies.
“The failure of the state governments to fill posts of Information Commissioners defeats the purpose of the RTI Act and affects the right of information, which becomes a ‘dead letter’ if vacancies are not filled up,” the CJI was quoted as saying by LiveLaw, a legal news portal.
The Supreme Court then directed the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to prepare a chart on the number of vacancies and number of appeals/complaints in all the commissions. It also urged the central and the state governments to take immediate action to fill the vacancies.
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‘Govts not taking necessary steps’
Commenting on the importance of information commissions under the Right to Information Act, Bhardwaj said that these “play a very critical role in ensuring that people’s right to information is not violated”.
She then pointed out that “under the RTI Act, it is known when the commissioners are going to retire, so governments have a responsibility to make sure that there is a timely appointment for the post of commissioners, and that the work for filling the post of commissioners is started on time.”
“What we are seeing, unfortunately, is that despite clear instructions of the Supreme Court, routinely commissioners retire, not just at the Centre, but also at the state, governments are not taking the steps that are necessary to fill those posts on time,” she said.
Bhardwaj added: “That basically means that the working of the commission gets very adversely impacted if you’re not going to have an adequate number of commissioners,” Bhardwaj explained.
According to the activist, the Maharashtra State Information Commission, as of December 2022, had over 1,15,000 appeals and complaints pending. She, therefore, advocated for commissions to run at their maximum capacity of a chief information commissioner along with 10 commissioners.
“But we’re seeing that appointments are just not made in many commissions. Four commissions in the country have no commissioners and are completely defunct,” she said, adding, “This is a complete violation of people’s right to know. And we are now in a situation where the central information commission is headed that way.”
Four defunct commissions
A report published by SNS on 11 October also showed that four information commissions were completely defunct as no new commissioners were appointed to these offices after the incumbent commissioners demitted office.
These are the information commissions in Jharkhand, Telangana, Mizoram and Tripura.
The report titled, ‘Report Card on the Performance of Information Commissions in India, 2022-23’, also showed that six of the commissions, including the CIC, were currently headless. The list includes state information commissions of Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Bihar and Punjab.
As for the CIC, it pointed out that this is the sixth time in 10 years that the CIC has been rendered headless.
In a judgment passed in February 2019, the Supreme Court emphasised the importance of the RTI Act, asserting that it was “enacted not only to sub-serve and ensure freedom of speech.”
“On proper implementation, it has the potential to bring about good governance, which is an integral part of any vibrant democracy. Attaining good governance is also one of the visions of the Constitution. It also has a vital connection with the development,” the court had observed.
The court then said that the government should fill up vacancies in the commissions in future without delay.
For this purpose, it added that the process for filling up a particular vacancy be initiated 1-2 months before the date on which the vacancy is likely to occur so that there is not much time lag between the occurrence of the vacancy and the filling up of the post.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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I do not know if Anajali Bhardwaj is only doing vacancy watching of the information commissions or also checking if the information commissioners are doing their job correctly too.
I too have been using the RTI Act with the sole purpose of furthering the objective of the Act as stated in the Preamble: ‘to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority’ and ‘to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed’.
My experience over the years has led me to introduce a Mission Statement for saving the Right to Information. It goes like this:
Save Right to Information. Use Right to Information Act.
Get Information, Or……
Expose at least three idiots/traitors* among public servants!
1. The Public Information Officer
2. The First Appellate Authority (and the head of public authority where the head of the public authority is not the FAA!) and
3. The Information Commissioner
* An idiot is one who does not know the job s/he is getting paid to do and a traitor is one who knows it but does not do it. Provided that even an idiot can be branded a traitor based on the consequences of his/her action
Right from the first Chief Information Commissioners of the Central Information Commission and Kerala State Information Commissions, the way they had started implementing the RTI Act, there was no doubt that instead of containing corruption, these commissions were going to be the new breeding grounds of corruption. And long before our Supreme Court had accepted a wide meaning for corruption, while exonerating Adv Prashant Bhushan in a contempt of court case against him for alleging that 8 Chief Justices of India were corrupt, the information commissions had established one firmly-that is, even when directing the defaulting Public Information Officers to provide information sought, failing to impose the mandatory penalty. And going by the quip that there are no free lunches, the possibility of corruption in its usual sense cannot also be ruled out. Today I am convinced that these commissions have been reduced to rehabilitation centers for retired bureaucrats, both at the Centre and the states.
Right from not disposing of complaints and appeals on first come first served basis to disposing them off in lackadaisical manner to failing to impose the mandatory penalty of defaulting PIOs the failings of the information commissioners are there for all to see. In the matter of their failures to impose the mandatory penalty the information commissioners are also liable to be prosecuted under Section 219 of the IPC which can end up with imprisonment for 7 years. But how can an ordinary citizen do it? The courts themselves are a big failure in dispensing justice. Then there is the cost factor and also the absurd need for members of the public to take permission from one public servant to prosecute another.