DAYS BEFORE dates for the Lok Sabha elections are announced and a code of conduct prevents fresh official appointments, the government is looking to name at least two new commissioners at the Central Information Commission (CIC).
The commissioners Right To Information (RTI) watchdogs who decide what information the government should share with citizen are decided by a committee headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and includes Leader of Opposition L.K. Advani. But the process of selection is com- pletely opaque. Minister of State at the Prime Ministers Office, Prithviraj Chavan said: The Prime Minister was ill, and so the process could not take place ear- lier. The appointments are on the anvil. Two vacancies are there. The CIC currently has seven commissioners after O.P. Kejriwal retired on February 22. Rules allow up to ten commis- sioners to be appointed. Currently, the number of appeals disposed by each com- missioner varies wildly (see Box). Leading information activists oppose fresh appoint- ments. Shekhar Singh of The National Campaign for the Peoples Right to Information a network of groups who lob bied for the RTI law is writ ing to the government against more appointments. Singh said, The current com missioners can comfortably end the pendency if they dispose 250 300 appeals per month. Commissioners are akin to Supreme Court judges, expen sive posts funded by the taxpayers money. If the existing commissioners are equipped with adequate support staff and infrastructure and their performance is moni tored, pendencies can be tackled effectively. Earlier this month, the government had turned down Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhis request to equip existing commissioners with more staff instead of appointing more commissioners. It said the Department of Expenditure had placed a bar of seven staff per commissioner. Gandhi's contention, in a letter to the PMO, read: An Information Commissioner needs a staff of at least 16 to deliver on all counts no systematic evaluation has been done in the last few years. If the Department of Expenditure is going to decide the number of staff, the sole criterion is the availability of money If this be . the case, it would be prudent to have less commissioners and give them adequate staff. [email protected] http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/ArticleText.aspx?article=01_03_2009_009_004&kword=&mode=1 ----------------------------- Dowry is a Myth. Gifts become dowry only if the Wife is not happy due to any reason! http://www.saveindianfamily.org/ http://www.societymirror.info/ http://www.crisp-india.org/ http://www.antidowry.org/ http://www.wethemen.us/ I also blog at: http://legalterror.wordpress.com Keep Fighting Legal Terrorism Keep Fighting Inequality in Justice http://www.pollsb.com/webdigr http://www.myntra.com/affiliate/329 If "con" is the opposite of "pro", then what is the opposite of progress? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rti_india/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rti_india/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[email protected] mailto:[email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
