Supreme Court "poser": Why appoint only bureaucrats in Central Information Commission?

By A Representative
The Supreme Court has reportedly taken a “serious note” of the way in which the Government of India has sought to fill up vacant posts of information commissioners in the Central Information Commission (CIC), even as questioning the additional solicitor general as to why only bureaucrats were being short-listed and appointed as information commissioners.
A note issued by two senior Right to Information (RTI) activists, Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri, following an apex court hearing, said, “The court commented on the government’s propensity to only select bureaucrats for such posts even though the RTI Act provides for commissioners from various fields, only one of which is administration.”
The bench, consisting of Justice AK Sikri and Justice S Abdul Nazeer, wondered why even the search committee consisted mostly of bureaucrats who then short-listed other bureaucrats, the note added. After hearing all the arguments, the bench reserved the judgment.
The court’s observation came following the appointment of four commissioners and the chief information commissioner of CIC, which according to the petitioners, Anjali Bhardwaj, Lokesh Batra and Amrita Johri, had happened in “an arbitrary manner, as the search committee had in violation of its mandate, short-listed persons who had not even applied for the post in response to advertisements.”

Right to walk, right to livelihood: Clearing footpaths 'can't mean' clearing out the urban poor

By Aseem Mishra* India’s cities are locked in a quiet but intensifying struggle over one of their most contested public spaces: the footpath. For pedestrians, a footpath is basic infrastructure—a strip of ground that should allow people to move safely, independently and with dignity. For millions of informal workers, the same stretch of pavement is a workplace, a source of daily income and often the difference between survival and destitution.

Ample evidence of child labour in South Gujarat's cash rich sugarcane belt: Study

By Rajiv Shah A recent German government-funded study , undertaken jointly by the NGO Prayas Centre for Labour Research and Action and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, which mainly deals examines the working conditions of migrant workers in the cash-rich sugarcane zone of South Gujarat, has gone a long way to suggest large scale prevalence of child labour during the harvesting season.

Women lawyers petition Supreme Court, seek reconsideration of Aug 4 order on bar council co-option

By A Representative A group of women advocates who stood sixth and seventh among female candidates in the recent Bar Council elections have filed a petition before the Supreme Court, seeking a recall and reconsideration of the Court’s August 4 order determining the mechanism for co-opting women into State Bar Councils.

Counterview

Search This Blog