Close to a Year After Govt Sought Applications For Eight Vacancies In CIC, Posts Remain Empty

New Delhi: Eight of the Central Information Commission (CIC)'s ten information commissioner posts remain empty almost a year after the Union government solicited applications to fill in the vacancies, transparency campaigner Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired) has pointed out.

Meanwhile, incumbent chief information commissioner Heeralal Samariya is set to demit office later this year.

The CIC is the final appellate authority in RTI matters pertaining to the Union government.

Comprising the chief information commissioner and having a sanctioned strength of ten information commissioners, the CIC can direct public information officers to provide information and penalise them for wrongful non-disclosures.

Eleven months ago, in August last year, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) invited applications for the CIC's eight vacant information commissioner posts.

Later last year the department said it received 161 applications and noted that the next step in filling the eight vacancies would be to send the applicants' details to a search committee.

However, the CIC's website shows that the only commissioners in office are Samariya and information commissioners Anandi Ramalingam and Vinod Kumar Tiwari.

The Supreme Court in January had directed the DoPT to file an affidavit charting a timeline in which it would fill the eight vacancies.

The search committee that is to select information commissioners from the pool of applicants must comprise the prime minister, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha and a cabinet minister nominated by the prime minister.

The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information had noted in July last year that the CIC was functioning with the eight vacancies even as it had almost 23,000 appeals or complaints pending, a number that the campaign noted was “steadily increasing”.

Samariya, the incumbent chief information commissioner, will demit office later this year. The government was to stop accepting applications to fill in his post after his retirement on Monday, per PTI.

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