Cripple and scuttle : On vacancies in Information Commissions

Governments are discouraging the exercise of the right to information

Nearly two decades after the passage of the Right to Information Act, it is quite apparent that governments, at least sections of it, are uncomfortable with the idea of transparency and empowerment associated with it. Amendments to dilute its efficacy and attempts to defeat it by delaying or denying information have been quite common for years. Another way to scuttle the law is to cripple the functioning of information commissions at the central and State levels. The issue has surfaced again, with the Supreme Court of India questioning the large number of vacancies in the central and some State Information Commissions. These commissions hear appeals from members of the public who have been denied access to information or have failed to elicit a response from designated information officers in various departments and institutions. A Division Bench has taken note of the fact that there are eight vacancies in the posts of Information Commissioners in the Central Information Commission (CIC), while 23,000 appeals are pending before it. In fact, some State-level Information Commissions are almost defunct for want of members to hear the public. Any court is bound to ask, as the Court has now done, how an institution can be of any use if it does not have persons to perform the required duties under the law.

The Court has sought to impart some urgency to the matter by directing the Department of Personnel and Training to spell out in two weeks the timelines for completing the selection process and notifying the appointments of the eight Information Commissioners in the CIC. It has also asked for details about the search committee and the list of applicants for the posts. Similarly, States that have initiated the appointment process but without any definite timeline have been asked to complete the process within a specified time. However, this may not be enough to bring about a revival in the fulfilment of the original purpose of the Act. Besides filling up vacancies, not all governments have complied with a Court verdict of 2019 that called for proactive efforts to fill up vacancies in time by advertising them early. The CIC’s post was stripped of its autonomy some years ago when the government removed the fixed five-year tenure and made it open-ended. Not much has been done to appoint candidates from various walks of life, as retired civil servants continue to be chosen, a point noted by the Bench in the latest hearing. It is inevitable that a large number of vacancies will result in a huge backlog and ultimately discourage the people from seeking information. It is difficult not to conclude that this is what those in power want.