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.”
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