The Supreme Court has directed the Centre and several states, including Bengal, to file status reports on the number of vacancies in the Central Information Commission (CIC) and the state information commissions and by when they would be filled up.
A bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan passed the directive while dealing with a petition filed by RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj and others complaining about the large-scale vacancies in various information commissions, frustrating the very objective of providing information to citizens under the Right to Information Act.
According to the information provided by Bhardwaj, 8 of the 11 posts of information commissioners are lying vacant at the CIC. The large number of vacancies at the state information commissions have virtually made some of them defunct.
The bench passed the following order: “Mr Prashant Bhushan, learned counsel for the petitioners, has furnished the status of vacancies in the Central Information Commission and various State Information Commissions as on 11.11.2024. As per the information furnished, there are three Information Commissioners working in the Central Information Commission and eight posts are lying vacant.
“Mr Brijender Chahar, learned additional solicitor-general, seeks and is granted two weeks’ time to file a status report which shall also specifically apprise us of the initiative taken by the competent authority to fill up the vacant posts in the Central Information Commission.
“In addition… there are seven vacant posts of State Information Commissioner in Maharashtra, eight in Karnataka, two in Chhattisgarh, one in Bihar, four in West Bengal, five in Odisha and two in Tamil Nadu.
“In Jharkhand, Telangana and Tripura, the State Information Commissions are lying defunct for the last several years as no fresh appointments have been made therein, a factum which this Court also adverted to in the order dated 30.11.2023.”