Over 200 applicants in race to become the chief information commissioner
31 Dec, 2014Reply by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed that the government has received 203 applications for the post of chief information commissioner at the Central Information Commission (CIC). The applicants include all the seven information commissioners currently working in the CIC.
The applicants include M A Khan Yusufi, Vijai Sharma, M Sridhar Acharyulu, Yashovardhan Azad, Sharat Sabharwal and Manjula Prasher who are working as the information commissioner. The other applicants for the post includes Secretary (Culture) Ravindra Singh, railway board chairman Arunendra Kumar, secretary (I&B ) Bimal Julka, former education secretary Ashok Thakkur, former tourism secretary Parvez Dewan, former urban development secretary Sudhir Krishna, former textile secretary Zohra Chatterji, former CBI chief A P Singh and former Doordarshan DG (news) Archana Dutta among others. This is the first time that the DoPT invited applications for post of the chief information commissioner and in the past, one of the information commissioners was appointed as the chief. A final decision regarding the appointment shall be taken by a three member panel headed by the PM the meeting of which is yet to be fixed.
The CIC has been headless since August 22 The provisions of this Act shall have effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent therewith contained in the Official Secrets Act, 1923 (19 of 1923), and any other law for the time being in force or in any instrument having effect by virtue of any law other than this Act. after the superannuation of the then incumbent Rajiv Mathur. Currently, no information commissioner has been allotted the work of appeals / complaints related to PMO, Parliament, Supreme Court or cabinet secretariat and the pendency of such cases has risen to over 11,000.