The Supreme Court had asked the Centre and states to maintain transparency in appointments of Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners and upload the details of search committees and applicants on their website.
Commenting on the appointment process, Commodore Lokesh Batra, one of the petitioners in the case, said the government has failed to comply with the Supreme Court directions of posting the details on the website.
” Government did not comply with the Supreme Court directions viz transparency as it did not post details on its website,” said Batra.
During the hearing, the Centre had told the top court that the search committee has shortlisted names for the post of CIC and a final decision will be taken soon.
A bench of Justices A K Sikri, S Abdul Nazeer and R Subhash Reddy asked the Centre to put on the website details of search committee for CIC and information commissioners.
Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for the Centre, had informed the court that a total of 65 applications were received for the CIC post and 280 applications for the post of four ICs in the Central Information Commission.
She had said after these posts are filled up, notification will be issued for inviting applications for remaining posts of ICs.
The Centre seems to have ignored the plea of former Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu who had called for adequate representation of non-bureaucrats in the commission in accordance with the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
Citing Section 12 (5) of the RTI Act, he had written to the President that the Act provides for selecting people of eminence, having experience in law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism, mass media or administration and governance.
If the government selects more number of former bureaucrats for these posts, it will be a breach of the letter and spirit of the transparency law and more particularly that of Section 12(5) of the RTI Act, which may not stand the scrutiny by the judiciary, he argued.
