Key Points
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. Sinhas 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..
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...
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 youre not going to have an adequate number of commissioners, Bhardwaj explained...
