Activists decry absence of info panel

Ongole: The 13 adivasi families belonging to a vulnerable tribe, Gadaba, living in a small tribal hamlet Chatterjipuram in Visakhapatnam district, are on the verge of losing their land which they have been cultivating for the last 40 years.

When they are denied their existence as per the new records of revenue department, Nookaraju, an RTI activist, sought old records of area from tahsildar in July 2017. As there is no response from tahsildar’s office even after the first appeal, he sent his request to the State Information Commission (SIC) and filed second appeal. As the SIC is defunct in Andhra Pradesh, Nookaraju has not received a response yet.

According to section 15 of the Right to Information Act, every state must have an SIC consisting of a chief information commissioner and 10 information commissioners. The high courts of various states held that the SIC must consist of at least the chief and one information commissioner.

Section 15 (3) of RTI Act states the SICs be appointed by the Governor on the recommendation of Chief Minister, Opposition leader in the Assembly and a Cabinet minister nominated by the Chief Minister.

AP used to have SIC at the time of bifurcation. The commission continued to work for both AP and Telangana till May 2017. As there is no SIC for two Telugu states, the High Court at Hyderabad directed the states to setup their SICs before September 21, 2017, responding to PIL 164/2017 in August 2017.

On September 25, 2017, Dr Raja Sundaram Soma assumed office as the first chief information commissioner of Telangana and Buddha Murali as the state information commissioner. But AP government washed its hands of after opening an office for SIC at Mangalagiri on August 11 last year and appointing finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu as member of recommendation committee on August 24.

As the office is established with allowed 62-member staff including secretaries, superintendent, accounts officer, their assistants including personal assistants and secretaries for non-appointed chief information commissioner and three state information commissioners, their salaries are being paid every month as per the finance department order dated September 4, 2017.

The Satark Nagrik Sanghatan (SNS) and Centre for Equity Studies (CES) conducted a study and published, ‘Report Card of Information Commissions in India,’ an assessment of the performance of Information Commissions setup under the RTI Act.

They sent the report to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu also and requested him to take immediate action to appoint commissioners to ensure that the AP SIC becomes functional. They urged him to ensure that the appointments are made in a transparent manner following due process to select candidates from diverse backgrounds meeting the eligibility criteria laid out by the Supreme Court.

B Chakradhar, one of the researchers, told The Hans India that they are deeply concerned and anguished about the status of AP SIC. He said the assessment found that as the SIC was not functional for last one year, people seeking information from public authorities under the jurisdiction of AP SIC have had no recourse to independent appellate mechanism prescribed under the RTI Act. He said that this constitutes a violation of peoples’ fundamental right to information.

Pola Vijay Babu, former state information commissioner of AP shared a similar opinion. Speaking to The Hans India, he said non-appointment of SIC is violation of RTI Act and added in democracy, people have every right to know what’s going on in the state. But due to malafide intention, the state government is not appointing SIC and showing lame excuses.

He said it is nothing but exploiting and misleading public from knowing the truth. The non-interest of government to appoint information commissioners in the state is helping people with muscle and power to silence the voices speaking against them.