RTI Act does not allow for a joint commission
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Hyderabad: Even as the RTI Act does not allow for a joint commission, the AP Information Commission continues to hear complaints and appeals from both AP and Telangana, for more than a year since bifurcation.
While there is a lot of confusion and Telangana lacks its own Information Commission, it recently went ahead and placed S. Prabhakar Reddy, IPS (retd.), in full additional charge as chief information commissioner in the AP Information Commission.
The orders were passed following retirement of the current chief information commissioner, Jannat Hussain. “The chief and information commissioners are to be appointed through a gazette notification like public service commission. Also, as per Section 15 of the RTI act, “Every state government shall, by notification in the official Gazette, constitute a body to be known as the (name of the state) Information Commission to exercise powers conferred on, and to perform the functions assigned to it under this act.” explained United Forum for RTI Campaign convener Rakesh Reddy.
Senior officials from the AP Information Commission said, “Even according to seniority, appointment of Mr Prabhakar Reddy isn’t appropriate. We don’t know what criteria the government relied on.”
“Its inclusion in Schedule 10 was legally not correct. The chief and the other information commissioners are to be appointed through a gazette notification much like the public service commission as per Section 15 of the RTI act,” Mr Rakesh Reddy said.
RTI activists and experts said that no one had approached the court on this issue till now but they are contemplating ways to do the same. During budget allocations, the Telangana government had allocated nearly Rs 7.5 crore in the budget estimates of 2015-16 for the Information Commission. Activists have been voicing concerns that unless there is a new commission, the doubling of allocation does not make any sense at all.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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