GUWAHATI, Aug 23 � A recent meeting of the multi-stakeholders called for initiating steps to fill up the vacancies in the Information Commissionarates months ahead of such posts lying vacant. The meeting was attended by 28 RTI activists from ten states of the country and officials from Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Manipur, Delhi and the Central Information Commission.
Indian Institute of Public Administration organised the meeting and it was presided over by Arvind Kejriwal and Nikhil Dey in the morning and by Aruna Roy in the post-lunch session.
The participants of the meeting also called for open newspaper advertisement inviting applications for filling up such vacancies. There should also be a provision to nominate people for the posts with the consent of the nominees, they suggested.
However, they reminded that the persons offering candidatures for such posts should be persons of eminence in public life with wide knowledge and experience in law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism, mass media or administration and governance.
The application form shall also contain a detailed questionnaire seeking as much information as possible about their past activities and their views on certain issues.
The names of all candidates, along with their application forms, should be put up by DOPT on a website for a month inviting public feedback (both positive and negative) on these names. In case of nominations, the names of people who nominated the person will also be made public.
There shall be a screening committee (SC) consisting of heads of certain institutions and individuals holding certain positions who shall be treated as ex-officio members of this committee.
The committee should consist of members from law, science and technology, social service, Legislature, health, management, journalism, mass media or administration, education, business etc. (as for example, Vice Chancellors of some universities, president of Supreme Court Bar Association, head of some reputed journalism institutes, etc).
Meetings of screening committee should be open for public and media, who can only attend it but not intervene at any stage. The meetings shall also be video recorded.
The screening committee, on the basis of all this material, will make a �second shortlist�, which will consist of three times the number of names as there are vacancies. The names of those rejected shall be put up on website.
This shortlist shall be presented to the selection committee consisting of the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition and a Cabinet Minister. They shall select finally from this list.
It was felt by the participants that the above suggestions can be implemented by the government through simple rules. It would not require any amendments to the law. There was a disagreement on this from some state officials, said a press release here.
The participants of the meeting also discussed the ways and means to provide effective protection to the RTI activists.
