Government seeks one more month to appoint Information Commissioners

Thiruvananthapuram: The Government has appealed to the High Court to grant one more month to appoint Commissioners to State Information Commission.

In an affidavit filed before the Court, the government said that the meeting of selection committee comprising of the Chief Minister, Minister for Industries and Information Technology and Opposition Leader could not be held on account of political engagements of the Leader of the Opposition and Minister.

In a writ petition filed by M. A. Pookoya, a division bench of the Court presided over by Chief Justice Asok Bhushan had ordered on November 23, 2015 that the process of selection of the Commissioners should be completed in six weeks. The Government issued a notification seeking applications on December 12. Subsequently, it approached the court for time up to February 7 to complete the process since as many as 234 (210 valid) applications had been received.

RTI Federation State president D. B. Binu said in a statement that thousands of petitions were pending before Commission because of delay in appointment of Commissioner. Once the Assembly election is declared, appointments would be possible only with the permission of Election Commission of India.

Now, the Commission was functioning only in a nominal manner. The term of the Chief Information Commissioner Siby Mathews will be over on April 23. With that, the functioning of the Commission would come to a halt. The government was thus trying to undermine the functioning of the Commission, he said.