Telangana Government Appoints Four New RTI Commissioners
The appointments are aimed at strengthening transparency and ensuring faster disposal of RTI applications
Hyderabad: The state goverment revived its long-defunct Telangana State Information Commission (TSIC) with the appointment of four Information Commissioners on Monday, ending a prolonged vacancy of nearly two-and-a-half years. Governor Jishnu Dev Varma approved the appointments following a meeting with Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy at Raj Bhavan earlier in the day.
This development follows last week’s appointment of Dr G. Chandrashekar Reddy, a 1991-batch IFS officer and former principal secretary in the CMO, as Chief Information Commissioner (CIC). Dr Reddy took charge on May 9, filling a post that had been lying vacant since August 2020 following the retirement of Raja Sadaram. His successor, Buddha Murali, served in an additional capacity until September 2022, after which the position remained unfilled.
The TSIC became defunct during the previous BRS regime in February 2023, which failed to make fresh appointments until it demitted office in December 2023.
Revanth Reddy, accompanied by legislative affairs minister D. Sridhar Babu, urged the Governor to clear the month long-pending file concerning the appointments. The state government had recommended seven names for the posts, but the Governor gave his approval to only four: P.V. Srinivas Rao, Mohsina Parveen, Deshala Bhoopa and Boreddy Ayodhya Reddy.
Ayodhya Reddy, who served as chief public relations officer (CPRO) to the Chief Minister, has now been moved out of the CMO to assume his new role. All four appointees will hold office for a term of three years.
Similarly, the posts of information commissioners also remained vacant after the previous panel comprising Katta Shekar Reddy, Guguloth Shankar Naik, Syed Khaleelullah, Myda Narayan Reddy, and Mohd Ameer, demitted office in February 2023. No replacements had been made until now, rendering the TSIC virtually non-functional for more than two years.
The Supreme Court had taken serious note of the delay in appointment of CIC and information commissioners in several states. On January 7 this year, it directed all state governments, including Telangana, to expedite the appointments. The court's intervention came amid mounting public grievances and a growing backlog of Right to Information (RTI) appeals in the absence of a functioning commission.
As of December 28, 2024, a staggering 10,688 RTI appeals were pending, highlighting the urgent need for reconstituting the TSIC.
