India, Maharashtra, vijay kumbhar, News, Governance, RTI, Transparency, Civic Issues, Real Estate

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Big question mark on new appointments of state information commissioners in Maharashtra

Move to challenge administrative tribunal’s order in the High Court has put a big question mark on new appointments of state information commissioners in Maharashtra.In an interesting development Government of Maharashtra who had opposed the petition on appointments of State information commissioners in the High court stating that the petitioner had remedy of filing original application before the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT) for the relief as prayed for in the writ petition, has now filed a writ petition ( 11623/2015) in high court stating MAT has no jurisdiction to try such cases.


The Bombay High Court
Advocate John S Kharat from Ahmednagar had filed a writ petition ( No 4477 /2011) in Aurangabad bench of Mumbai high court challenging arbitrary appointments of then State information commissioners (SIC) P. W. Patil, M. H Shaha and D. B Deshpande. Then Assistant Government Pleader (AGP) argued that the petitioner had remedy of filing original application before the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal for the relief as prayed for in the writ petition. Having confronted with this, learned counsel for the petitioner withdrew the writ petition with liberty to the petitioner to file original application before the MAT.

Accordingly Kharat filed original application ( 469/2011) in Aurangabad bench of MAT.It was transferred to MAT Mumbai ( 823/2011). MAT on 16 April 2015 delivered its judgement and passed severe strictures on procedure of SIC appointments. MAT had observed   that while scouting for the said posts, the High Powered Committee that recommends candidate for posts of SIC to the Governor, has to make sure that the area of resources is sufficiently large so as to attract and ensure the appointment of the best talent for these important posts. However wider source from the fields of law, science and technology etc. was apparently not taken into account with the kind of seriousness by the committee
Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal

Citing the recommendations of the Supreme Court in the Namit Sharma (review) case, the Tribunal had also observed that there was no material to show as to what the state of affairs was with regard to the 68 candidates other than the 4 selected for posts of SIC’s. MAT had criticized Government   for not framing any rules for appointment of SIC’s, and  had also observed that there was no advertisement as such. There was no exact date on which the process commenced and there was no exact preform of application.

MAT had given following direction to Government of Maharashtra

 • There is an urgent need to make rules consistent with the provisions of Right To Information Act, 2005 especially Section 15 thereof for selections to the posts of Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners. It will be desirable to have the rules in place much before the next selection is taken up for consideration by the High Powered Committee under the Information act. The directions of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Namit Sharma’s case (reviews judgment) be carefully perused and implemented.




• It will be within the discretion of the Committee to fix the eligibility criteria for the said posts. But there again, the provisions of the Information Act may be strictly followed and it be ensured that the legislative mandate to have eminent persons from all the various disciplines like Law, Science and Technology etc should be given full scope to complete. The criteria should be duly publicised well in advance before the selection process begins. Sufficiency and mode of publicity of the said criteria will be within the discretion of the Committee

• The selection process must be transparent and definitive without any scope for apprehension of partiality, favouritism and such other vices. There must be a definitive time frame from the commencement of the said process till its conclusion without submission of the recommendations to His Excellency, the Governor. The details of the course of action in this behalf are left to the discretion of the committee but the following measures can be commended for consideration and effectuation: i)An officer of senior rank must be appointed to perform the duties akin to what in relation to several such committees is called Member Secretary…; The Committee may make sure that a proper schedule is appointed for the selection process…the duration of time between the date of commencement of distribution and the last date of its receipt by the Officer may not be more than four to six weeks…

• The Chief Secretary, Government of Maharashtra is requested to bring this judgment of the notice of the Hon’ble Chairman and Hon’ble members of the Committee for information and action. The Chief Secretary of the Government of Maharashtra may report compliance herewith within eight weeks from today (16 April 2015).

However instead of complying with the directions of the MAT, Government of Maharashtra has preferred writ in the High Court challenging those.Meanwhile all the SIC's whose appointments were challenged are either retired ,resigned or removed from the services long back. Hence any order in this regard will not have any effect on then appointments. But complying with Supreme court or MAT  order in further appointments may make some positive effect . 

Now whether MAT has such jurisdiction or not will be decided in the high court.But meanwhile there is big question mark on appointments of new information commissioners in Maharashtra.Regardless of pending the said writ, Government of Maharashtra may fill the vacant SIC posts with prior consent of the High Court , but will they do that? 

Subscribe for Free

To receive free emails or free RSS feeds, please, subscribe to Vijay Kumbhar's Exclusive News & Analysis


RTI KATTA is a platform to empower oneself through discussions amongst each other to solve their problems by using Right to Information act, Every Sunday at Chittaranjan Watika, Model Colony,Shivaji nagar, Pune, between 9.30 to 10.30 A.M.


RTI Resource Person, RTI Columnist
Phone – 9923299199
Email – kvijay14@gmail.com
Website – http://surajya.org