In Namit Sharma
judgement, Supreme Court of India had directed all governments that the
selection process of information commissions should be commenced at least three
months prior to the occurrence of vacancy. As
far as Maharashtra is concerned, it does not seem to obey supreme courts order.
In Maharashtra, there are total eight posts of information commissioners
including chief information commissioner, of which four are vacant and fifth
post is going to be vacant on 17 July, i.e. after 17 July, there will be five
posts vacant. Forget about starting
process of filling post before vacancy, government of Maharashtra has not
bothered to fill even vacant posts.
That is how the
government of Maharashtra honors Supreme Court orders. The history is matters under which it was possible to put hurdles
before the RTI applicants and appellants Government of Maharashtra had acted
promptly But stealthily. ( remember amendments to The Maharashtra RTI
rules) .But when it comes to fill the
vacancies or do something for the benefit of RTI or in the public interest it doesn't
even bother to disobey supreme court.
Recently
government of Maharashtra stealthily tried to frame appeal procedure rules for
state information commission. When I learnt about this, I wrote about it on
this blog. After that, lot of RTI activists and journalists called me about authenticity
of these draft rules and asked why government is trying to do this in such a hurry?
Moreover, why they have not made it public before they pass it ?. The answer of
this also lies in Namit Sharma judgement that was delivered by division bench
of supreme me court of India on 13 September 2013 and subsequently challenged by some renowned
RTI activists. In addition, we have
experienced in the past that why government doesn't make such things public? The
answer is simple, because if they make it public then there will be burden to make
those people friendly.
In this judgement,
SC had directed that the Central Government and/or the competent authority
shall frame all practice and procedure related rules to make working of the Information
Commissions effective and in consonance with the basic rule of law. Such rules
should be framed with particular reference to Section 27 and 28 of the Act within
a period of six months from today (i.e. from 13 September 2013 ).That may be the reason that government of Maharashtra
tried to frame those infamous appeal
procedure rules in hurry and stealthily.
The next two orders
i.e. (1) The Information Commissions at the respective levels shall henceforth
work in Benches of two members each. One of them being a ‘judicial member’,
while the other an ‘expert member’. and (2) The appointment of the judicial
members to any of these posts shall be made ‘in consultation’ with the Chief
Justice of India and Chief Justices of the High Courts of the respective
States, as the case may be, Were stayed by the supreme court in review petition
. However, there was no stay for any
other orders even then most of the governments have not followed that.
Supreme Court
had also directed that appointment of the Information Commissioners at both levels
should be made from amongst the persons empanelled by the DoPT in the case of
Centre and the concerned Ministry in the case of a State. The panel has to be
prepared upon due advertisement and on a rational basis as before recorded.
Only DoPT has has published advertisement for appointment of information commissions.
No other government seems to be following this order.
