E-Paper
Punjab: RTI panel gets 3 commissioners
The state government reduced the strength from 10 to 5 while the Centre reduced the term of commissioners from five to three years last year by amending the RTI Act.
The Punjab government on Monday appointed three commissioners to the Right to Information (RTI) Commission. They are advocate Bhupinder Singh, Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal and Varinderjit Singh Billing. According to a top official in the state government, “These members have been appointed after a thorough scrutiny and a selection process.”
All members had retired and the commission was working without a commissioner for about two months. Only a chief information commissioner (CIC), Inderpal Singh, was looking after the day-to-day work of the entire commission, hearing petitions, issuing orders and taking appeals.
He was appointed by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in January. A three-member panel comprising the chief minister, speaker of the legislative assembly and leader of Opposition selected the incumbents from among the applicants.
The state government reduced the strength from 10 to 5 while the Centre reduced the term of commissioners from five to three years last year by amending the RTI Act.
The working in the state information commission had come to a near standstill as all information commissioners (as per the sanctioned strength) had retired. The tenures of six commissioners ended between March 2022 and June this year.
From January to May, at least 3,900 appeals/complaints were instituted in the commission but only 1,057 could be disposed of. The pending appeals/complaints have increased to 8,900.
