The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Centre and the States to immediately take steps to fill up vacancies in the Central Information Commission (CIC) and State Information Commissions (SIC) before they became “defunct” and rendered the citizens’ right to know under the Right to Information (RTI Act) a “dead letter”.
A three-judge Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud gave the Centre three weeks to collate data from the States on the sanctioned strength of the CIC and SICs; existing and anticipated vacancies till March 31, 2024; and pending cases.
The case would be listed again for hearing after three weeks.
The order came in a petition filed by activist Anjali Bhardwaj, Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd) and Amrita Johri. They were represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan.
Mr. Bhushan argued that the continuing vacancies, making RTI almost redundant, was despite a Supreme Court judgment in 2019 directing the government to fill them up.
He said cases were piling up in these Information Commissions, and many of the bodies had stopped accepting cases.
The lawyer highlighted that CIC, the apex body under the RTI, itself was functioning without a Chief Information Commissioner. Only four Information Commissioners are functioning presently, and they are also due to retire on November 6.
He noted that the Jharkhand SIC had been defunct since May 2020. Likewise, the Tripura and Telangana SICs had been rendered defunct since July 2021 and February 2023, respectively.
Other SICs, including in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal, were almost crippled by vacancies and a huge backlog, Mr. Bhushan said.
