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| SIC may soon be reality, panel meeting next week | | | SANT KUMAR SHARMA
JAMMU, Sept 29: The state government is planning to constitute the State Information Commission (SIC) in the near future. A selection committee will meet soon to finalise the name of the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC), according to sources.
The selection committee comprising the Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, the Deputy Chief Minister, Tara Chand, and the leader of the largest opposition party, Mehbooba Mufti, will meet shortly to finalise the name of the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) of the state.
The committee is likely to meet as early as next week or a little later after consultations. Under the RTI Act, 2009, the CIC will be assisted by two information commissioners.
These two information commissioners will be appointed by the government after discussions with the CIC and seeking his/her concurrence.
If all goes well, it is likely that the State Information Commission (SIC) will start functioning before the civil secretariat moves to Jammu in early November.
The SIC is an important constituent of the official set-up as envisaged under the new RTI Act. The Act was passed in March this year and the commission should have been constituted almost simultaneously.
This has not happened so far and it is clear that the implementation of the Act has remained far behind schedule as the government apparently had its hands full.
Over the past couple of weeks, some RTI activists in the state have repeatedly approached the chief minister to speed up the implementation of the Act. The National Conference (NC) had promised to replace the RTI Act 2004 with updated and better RTI Act 2009.
The ruling party has kept its electoral promise to the extent of having dumped the RTI Act 2004 which suffered from many infirmities. It has also enacted the RTI Act 2009 which gives far more powers to the people to seek information from the government as compared to the earlier Act.
Yet, the non-appointment of the state information commission, the chief information commissioner and two information commissioners have been sore points with RTI activists. However, various departments have been going ahead with the appointment of the Public Information Officers (PIOs) as also Assistant Public Information Officers (APIOs).
Under the RTI Act, if information is denied to any applicant by the PIO of any department, he/she has the right to approach the Appealate Authority (AA). These appealate authorities have also not been appointed and notified by the departments, so far.
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