Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday directed the governments of AP and Telangana states to file written statements indicating the time they require to constitute State Information Commissions and also appoint the Chief Commissioner and Information Commissioners under the Right to Information Act. A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice T. Rajani was dealing with a PIL by Forum for Good Governance, represented by its general-secretary M. Padmanabhaiah, seeking to direct the two governments to appoint the information commissioners.
TS A-G K. Ramakrishna Reddy told the court that the State Information Commission was enlisted under 10th Schedule of the AP Reorganisation Act 2014 and the two governments have to reach a decision on appointment of the commissioners after due consultations. He urged the court to grant three months to the state to appoint the commissioners.
Wondering at the request of the A-G, the bench asked him where people would turn to, to obtain their right to resolve their grievance under the Right to Information Act for these three months. B. Rachana Reddy, counsel for the petitioner, told the court that about 20,000 cases were pending in both the states and any further delay in appointing the commissioners will infringe upon the rights of the people.
When the bench asked whether these three months would be sufficient to resolve the differences among the two states on the issue, AP A-G Dammalapati Srinivas said that they don’t have any differences with regard to appointment of information commissioners. He told the court that both the states have constituted their separate Information Commissions and in fact, the process to appoint the commissioners commenced a year ago, but it was pending due to unavoidable circumstances.
He said that providing infrastructure to the State Information Commission was a big task and it required more time. The bench, while adjourning the case for two weeks, directed the two governments to file written statements indicating the time they required to complete the process.
