Supreme Court asks government to appoint three Information Commissioners in six weeks

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today asked the government to appoint three Information Commissioners (ICs) in the Central Information Commission (CIC), whose posts are lying vacant for quite some time, within six weeks.

A bench comprising Justices J S Khehar and C Nagappan said it has already granted the time sought by the Centre, which should now appoint the ICs within this time period.

The bench was hearing the plea of the central government filed against the November 6 Delhi High Court order asking it to appoint three ICs at the apex transparency panel.

The High Court had asked the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to fill up the vacancies within 6 weeks from among the 553 applications received by it in response to two notifications issued in 2014 as the vacant posts have led to a massive backlog of cases.

The High Court's order had come on a PIL filed by RTI activists R K Jain, Lokesh K Batra and Subhash Chandra Agarwal, who had alleged that no action has been taken on the issue despite two "distress" letters written by CIC to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

The PIL filed in the High Court through lawyers Prashant Bhushan had sought filling up of posts of Chief IC and subordinate staff in a time-bound frame.