SC norms for info chief appointment: Activists 'intervene'

Former central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi and National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy on Tuesday filed an intervention petition with respect to a Supreme Court order that had set parameters on appointment of information commissioners.

As the two RTI activists can’t be part of the review petition, as they weren’t part of the original petition, they have filed an intervention plea through lawyer Prashant Bhushan. The matter is likely to be heard on December 3.

The SC order was delivered on September 13 when litigant Namit Sharma approached the court with respect to the appointment of commissioners and second appeal hearings.
The order had not just made headlines, but even stopped functioning in some of the information commissions including that of Maharasthra. The central government had recently filed a review petition on the same.

In their plea, the duo cite various reasoning given by prominent people, such as former chief justice of Bombay high court, Mohit Shah, and chief central information commissioner, Satyanand Mishra. While the former had called the SC judgment regressive, the latter had said, “Excessive judicialisation of the information commissions will rob these institutions of their flexibility. The society must decide if this is the right path.”

“Along with the plea, we will also be making suggestions on how to appoint information commissioners and make their functioning more efficient. This is because we only state that the present method is arbitrary, while we don’t state what else can be done,” said Gandhi.

Among the methods that the RTI activist will be advocating for appointment are advertising vacancies four months in advance, setting up a search committee of MPs, chief information commissioner, vice-chancellor, SC judge and RTI activist that will give recommendations to the present committee that oversees appointment, and having a set target of clearing around 5,000 second appeals per commissioner, per year along with a review of their performance.