PMO seeks EC’s approval to appoint 2 info commissioners

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has sought the Election Commission’s approval for appointing two more Information Commissioners to cope with the growing pressure of clearing appeals under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

Updated on: Mar 30, 2009, 24:44:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has sought the Election Commission’s approval for appointing two more Information Commissioners to cope with the growing pressure of clearing appeals under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

The government has zeroed in on Omita Paul, an Indian Information Service Officer and wife of former Delhi Police Commissioner K.K. Paul, and Manish Sisodia, an RTI activist.

Under the RTI law, there can be 10 commissioners and one Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) in the Central Information Commission, which now has four positions vacant.

According to a government source, junior minister in the Personnel Ministry Prithviraj Chavan had approved four persons — three retired bureaucrats and Sisodia in February — a week before the election schedule was announced.

But the PMO selected Paul and Sisodia. However, since the government has not yet set the efficiency norms for information commissioners, the annual rate of clearing appeals per state commissioner is just 600 nationally.

The CIC is performing better, with each commissioner clearing about 1,500 appeals a year. Till January, there were more than 10,000 cases pending with the CIC.

“If we count the number of pending appeals with the state commissions, the figure will be more than one lakh,” said a CIC official.

“It (speeding up of clearing appeals) will not happen without setting efficiency norms,” said an information commissioner, who was not willing to be quoted. An information commissioner costs Rs 25 lakh to the government, but there is no way to assess his/her performance.

The commissioners, however, blame inadequate staff and infrastructure for the situation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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