NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed Centre and states to provide clear timelines within two weeks for filling vacant posts in central and state information commissions (SIC) set up under the Right to Information (RTI) Act after noting that there were huge vacancies at the transparency watchdogs.
The information commission in three states, Jharkhand, Telangana and Tripura, had become defunct because they did not have even one information commissioner. The Right to Information Act 2005 provides for the appointment of 10 information commissioners at the Centre and each state/UT.
A bench of justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan told chief secretaries to report the status of the vacancies and the timelines to fill them up. “If you have started the process of appointment, give us clear timelines and if not, start the process immediately,” the bench said. The affidavits will have to be filed within two weeks.
The central government was also told to file a status report on the progress made to make the appointments at the Central Information Commission (CIC), which has only three information commissioners including the chief information commissioner.
The order was passed on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by transparency campaigner Anjali Bhardwaj and two others who informed the court about the way state governments were defeating the high goal of transparency and accountability sought to be achieved through the RTI Act, by rendering the information commissions redundant.
“They are virtually destroying the RTI by freezing vacancies,” said advocate Prashant Bhushan appearing for the petitioners, He pointed out that a judgment of the top court in February 2019 had called for the need to “crack the whip” to fill up the vacancies. Bhushan said the CIC only has three commissioners including the chief and had 22,000 pending appeals filed by people against denial of information by the government.
He underlined that the Jharkhand information commission had been defunct since May 2020, Telangana since February 2023 and Tripura since July 2021. Besides, he added that Maharashtra and Karnataka had 8 vacancies, Odisha with 5, and West Bengal with 4 being among the other states with vacant posts in SICs. The pendency of cases in Maharashtra had crossed the 100,000 mark with significant pendency in other states as well, Bhushan said.
Jharkhand government informed that the state has just had elections and till October 2023, the coram for the selection panel was not complete due to the absence of a leader of Opposition in the assembly. Telangana and Tripura informed that the process of appointment had already begun.
The top court has been monitoring the filling up of vacancies in CIC and SICs following its 2019 judgment where the court said that the RTI Act was not only enacted to sub-serve and ensure freedom of speech but also had the potential to “bring about good governance which is an integral part of any vibrant democracy”.