Kerala: Info Commission a one-man army
Sources at the Chief Minister's office said that steps for appointing the new commissioners were being initiated in view of the HC order.
Thiruvananthapuram: A month after the High Court cleared the way for appointing new information commissioners at the State Information Commission (SIC), the government is still dragging its feet. The SIC has been working as a single member commission with Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Vinson M. Paul alone over the last one year and the number of pending petitions have now reached about 15,000. Sources at the Chief Minister’s office said that steps for appointing the new commissioners were being initiated in view of the HC order. “We are in the process of issuing the notification for selection of new commissioners. We hope to make the appointments at the earliest,” Chief Minister’s private secretary Mr. M V Jayarajan said.
RTI activists alleged that the lackadaisical approach of the government indicated its lack of interest towards RTI. “With just the CIC, it takes two to three years for an appeal to get finalized now. This delay kills the spirit of the much-hyped law. It seems, the political parties in power wanted RTI to die a natural death,” said RTI Activist M T Thomas. The High Court on August 30 ordered scrapping of the selection of five information commissioners by the previous UDF government. The previous UDF government had selected P R Devadas, Abi Kuriakose, Royce Chirayil, K P Abdul Majeed and Ankathil Ajayakumar as information commissioners. The Governor as well as then Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan, who was also a member of the committee, had objected to the appointments. Subsequently the matter was considered by the High Court.
“The High Court wanted the government to expedite the fresh selection process as a lot of time was already lost. Even then there were no signs yet of any move by the government to appoint fresh members,” said RTI activist D. B. Binu. The SIC that deals with appeal petitions and complaint petitions pursuant to the RTI Act can have one chief information commissioner and upto 10 information commissioners. But the state has been limiting the number of information commissioners to five. Over the last one year, the SIC has only the Chief Information Commissioner.