Petition filed in Supreme Court seeking stay on the Namit Sharma judgment
12 Apr, 2013The Supreme Court of India had directed all the information commissions that any hearing of appeals and complaints under the Right to Information (RTI) Act would be by a two-member bench one of which must be a person with a legal degree. Many information commissions have stopped working due to lack of clarity on the judgment e.g. the state information commission of Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Manipur, Madhya Pradesh and Goa are some of such commissions where functions have come to a complete halt.
Now, a petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a stay on its order for a compulsory multimember bench with a legally trained member clause. The petitioners have also contended that due to uncertainty over the judgment, the governments of Madhya Pradesh and Goa are hesitating to go for fresh appointments of information commissioners despite the fact that the two commissions do not have any information commissioner. The petitioners, Aruna Roy and Shailesh Gandhi, have claimed that the order is prejudicially affecting the implementation of the Right to information Act, 2005.