The Supreme Court has taken a serious note of the vacancies existing in the Central Information Commission (CIC) asking the government to fill them up. The CIC, the top appellate body constituted under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, currently has eight vacancies out of a total 11 sanctioned posts.
What irked the court is the fact that despite the seven vacancies existing in 2023, with the serving four Information Commissioners (ICs) on the brink of retirement, the government did nothing to fill them.
A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan was hearing the plea filed by RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj and other petitioners saying that the deliberate non-filling of vacancies was a ploy to reduce the RTI law to a “dead letter”.
Appearing for petitioners senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan submitted that the government is virtually destroying the RTI Act.
Additional Solicitor General Brijender Chahar informed the court that three fresh appointments had been made to the CIC in November 2023. He asked for 10 days to file a status report on the latest position on vacancies in the CIC.
Justice Kant asked Chahar why the government not made appointments and file a compliance report instead.
A chart of pending cases, placed on record by Bhushan in court, showed the CIC had 22,462 appeals pending as on November 9, 2024.
