Supreme Court asks states to fill info commission vacancies

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday expressed its displeasure over the inordinate delay in filling the vacancies of information commissions at the Centre and in eight states inclouding West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana resulting in huge pendency of cases.

A bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan hearing a PIL filed by Anjali Bharadwaj and others questioned the states for not filing their response to the notice earlier this month regarding the vacancies in information commissions set up under the RTI Act.

After hearing counsel Prashant Bhushan, the Bench took serious note of the problem of vacancies in the information commissions. The counsel presented the status of vacancies in information commissions.

It was submitted that the Centre had invited applications to fill vacancies in the Central Information Commission by publishing an advertisement. The petitioners pointed out that the advertisement did not mention the number of posts for which applications were invited. Further, the Centre had issued such an advertisement in September 2016 also but had failed to fill any of the vacancies. Mr. Bhushan said currently in the CIC there are 4 vacancies even though nearly 24,000 appeals/complaints are pending before it. He said four more commissioners, including the chief will retire by December 1, 2018.

The court expressed it displeasure on the delay in filling vacancies and directed the additional solicitor general Pinky Anand, appearing for the Centre to file an affidavit with details of the number of vacancies that will be filled, the time frame within which the vacancies will be filled.