New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday questioned the Centre on the huge vacancies at the Central Information Commission (CIC) and State Information Commissions (SIC), observing that this was affecting the disposal of a large number of appeals and complaints. The top court expressed annoyance during the hearing of a plea seeking immediate filling up of posts of information commissions in the CIC and in SICs and said the "government has to do something".
A bench of Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan told Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand that functioning of these institutions will be hampered if there are vacancies.
"There are several vacancies in these bodies. This has become a phenomenon in various other statuatory bodies. You have to do something," the bench told to Anand. The ASG, who was present in the courtroom for some other matter, said she would seek instructions and revert back to the court.
"There are hundreds of applications pending. It cannot go on like this. Please look into it," the bench said.
Advocate Kamini Jaiswal, appearing for RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj, Commodore (Retd) Lokesh Batra and Amrita Johri, said currently there were four vacancies in the CIC where over 23,500 appeals and complaints are pending.
She said the SIC of Andhra Pradesh was "completely non-functional" as not a single information commissioner has been appointed to the commission.
The bench then sought the response from the Centre and the state governments of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Kerala, Odisha, Karnataka and Gujarat and issued notices to them.
The plea said the Centre and the state governments have "attempted to stifle" the functioning of the RTI Act by failing to do their statutory duty of ensuring appointment of commissioners in the CIC and SIC in a timely manner.
"This is despite huge backlogs of appeals and complaints in many information commissions across the country. Due to non-appointment of information commissioners, several information commissions take many months, and in some cases even years, to decide appeals and complaints due to accumulation of pending appeals/complaints, thus defeating the entire object of the RTI Act, 2005," the plea said.