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Following thousands of complaints and appeals under the RTI Act pending before the Central Information Commission (CIC) and the commissions in various states plagued by unfilled vacancies, three transparency campaigners, Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convenor of the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI); Commodore Lokesh K Batra (Retd); and Amrita Johri, a member of NCPRI; have moved the Supreme Court seeking direction to the Centre to immediately fill up all vacant posts through a transparent and time-bound manner.
They have repented the fact that how the Government of India and state governments have failed to do their statutory duty of ensuring appointment of commissioners in the CIC and State Information Commission in a timely manner attempting to hinder the functioning of the RTI Act.
“This is despite huge backlogs of appeals and complaints in many information commissions across the country. Due to non-appointment of information commissioners, several information commissions take many months, and in some cases, even years, to decide appeals and complaints due to the accumulation of pending appeals/complaints, thus defeating the entire object of the RTI Act, 2005. Currently, there are four vacancies in the Central Information Commission, even though more than 23,500 appeals and complaints are pending,” says the petition.
The petition has highlighted various shortcomings in this reference. On June 5, 2017, petitioners had also signed a letter by the NCPRI addressed to the Prime Minister. However, PMO had treated the letter as a grievance and registered it on the online grievance portal of the Central government. Upon tracking, the status showed that the case was closed as the matter was pending.
It prays for-
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