Supreme Court to hear plea concerning process of filling up vacancies in CIC and state panels in January

The Supreme Court on Tuesday posted the hearing of a plea seeking directions to government authorities for implementation of the top court's 2019 verdict regarding the timely and transparent appointment of Information Commissioners in the Central Information Commission (CIC) and state panels for the second week of January 2022.

A bench of Justice Abdul Nazeer and Justice Krishna Murari also granted four more weeks to the Karnataka government to file its status report regarding the current vacancies in its State Information Commission.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who appeared for petitioner and RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj, had sought implementation of the 2019 verdict, contending that the government has not complied with the directions.

Earlier, the apex court had sought from the Centre the latest compliance report on the judgement passed by the top court in 2019, and also the updated report stating the present status of vacancies.

By its 2019 order, the apex court had passed a slew of directions to the Central and State governments to fill vacancies across Central and State Information Commissions in a transparent and timely manner. In its order, the court had given three months to the Centre to fill the vacancies that existed in the CIC.

The top court had also directed the authorities concerned to put on the website the names of members of the search committee, meant for selection and appointment of CIC's information commissioners (ICs), within two weeks.

Bhardwaj had filed the application in an already pending PIL on filling up of vacancies in CIC and the State Information Commissions (SICs), in view of the top court's December 16, 2019 order.

The appointments of information commissioners are guided by the Right to Information Act, 2005.

The plea had contended that more than 300 people had applied for the vacancies and the government shortlisted seven people but details of others weren't on record at all. Criteria for selecting people for the search committee should be made public but it was not given to the leader of opposition too, it said.

(ANI)