-: [rti4empowerment] MoneyLife on : Chief Information Commissioners with short tenure have poor records

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

[rti4empowerment] MoneyLife on : Chief Information Commissioners with short tenure have poor records

MoneyLife

http://www.moneylife.in/article/chief-information-commissioners-with-short-tenure-have-poor-records/42223.html

Chief Information Commissioners with short tenure have poor records

Commodore Lokesh K Batra (Retd.) | 09/06/2015 07:00 PM |

With number of pending cases going over 40,000 at the Central Information Commission-CIC and 15,704 Cases pending in the Chief CIC bench, the Commission requires drastic reforms. Plus, the CCIC and ICs must have a tenure of at least three years to justify their appointment

After keeping the post of Chief Central Information Commissioners (CCIC) vacant for almost 10 months, the union government finally appointed Vijai Sharma, the senior-most Information Commissioner (IC) as the CCIC. However, Mr Sharma, an officer from the 1974 batch of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is left with less than six months before he retires on 1 December 2015, on attaining the age of 65.

In the past, between 5 September 2013 to 22 August 2014, we had three Chief Information Commissioners in the Central Information Commission (CIC), under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, who had short tenures.

I have since carried our study based on information available on CIC website. The study suggests that the CCIC, who headed the CIC for a shorter duration, have poor records in terms of disposing cases. During the 11 and a half months period to 22 August 2014, three people, Deepak Sandhu, Sushma Singh and Rajiv Mathur were CCICs and together disposed 893 cases or 165 cases per month on the average.

Some Observations

1. In 3.5 Months Tenure (5.9.2013 to 18.12.2013):

Ms Deepak Sandhu disposed = 796 Cases: @ Average =227.43 Cases per month

{During this period Pendency Increased by 467 cases to go up to 1,946 cases}

2. In next say 5 Months Tenure: (19.12.2013 to 21.05.2014):

Ms Sushma Singh disposed = 712 Cases: @ Average = 142.4 Cases per month

{During this period Pendency Increased by 1,308 Cases to go up to 3,254 Cases}

3. In next 3 Months Tenure (22.5.2014 to 22.8.2014):

Rajiv Mathur disposed = 385 Cases @ Average of 128.33 Cases per month

{During this period Pendency Increased by 4,397 Cases to go up to 7,651 Cases}

Total cases disposed by three Chief CIC in 11.5 Months are 1,893 cases at an average of 164.62 cases per month

With huge number of Pending Cases (40,019) in CIC and 15,704 Cases pending in Chief IC bench, the Commission requires drastic reforms. This includes the CIC to work on Saturdays like High Court for consolidating the work in registries and ICs finalising orders.

In addition, the CCIC, who also have administrative role at the CIC, must have at least three years of service left before retirement, to justify the appointment.

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Posted by: Lokesh Batra <batra_lokesh@yahoo.com>

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