A high-level committee headed by Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy on Tuesday appointed eight Information Commissioners. The Chief Minister managed to pick a majority of the nominees of his choice after he successfully managed to bring consensus among the two other committee members, Leader of Opposition N. Chandrababu Naidu and Deputy Chief Minister Damodar Raja Narasimha by accommodating one member each of their choice in the commission.
The new information commissioners are; additional director general of police M. Ratan, former Cyberabad police commissioner S. Prabhakar Reddy, former judge Imtiaz Ahmed, retired principal chief conservator of forests Madhukar Raj, editor of a vernacular daily P. Vijayababu, educationist S. Vijayanirmala, former Congress ZPTC member L. Tantiya Kumari and advocate and Congress activist V. Venkateswarlu.
In appointing the new Information Commissio-ners, the selection panel has maintained the regional and caste equilibrium besides giving priority to Congress leaders. The selection panel, in finalising the names, also laid emphasis on the high educational qualifications of the wannabe commissioners.
The Chief Minister also directed the officials to obtain an affidavit from all the commissioners giving an undertaking that they would not involve themselves in any other activity, be it politics or business. Mr Ratan is the only serving officer who made it to the commission and he would be appointed on quitting the service. He is due for retirement in April.
While the term of commissioners is five years two of them -- Mr Prabhakar Reddy and Mr Madhukar Raju -- will have premature exit as they will attain the age of 65 before end of their five year term.
The meeting, which lasted for about an hour, was held in a cordial atmosphere much to the relief of the government. Earlier, the meeting began with Mr Naidu seeking to know whether the government already made the selection or it wanted to discuss. The Chief Minister said the appointments would be through consensus and read out the bio-data of applicants for the committee members to deliberate.
When Mr Imtiaz Ahmed’s name cropped up, Mr Naidu pointed out that the candidate was in politics for past one decade and contested against Chief Minister. Mr Kiran Kumar Reddy laughed it off. The commission will have new office at APTS premises in BRK Bhavan.
