Punjab to not have more than five Information Commissioners, reveals RTI documents

Vijay Mohan

Chandigarh, February 27

The Punjab State Information Commission (PSIC) will not have more than five commissioners, according to directions passed recently by Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann. The Commission, according to notified rules, can have one State Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) and not more than 10 State Information Commissioners.

This has been revealed in a reply received by a retired army officer this month in response to details sought from the PSIC on the appointment of commissioners under the Right to Information Act 2005.

“Keeping the workload of the State Information Commission, Punjab, the number of Information Commissioners / Members in the Commission may be reduced to five. However, at present, if more number of Information Commissioners are working then the number may be reduced when a vacancy occurs,” a noting sheet attached with the reply states.

PSIC is an autonomous and statutory body constituted as per the Right to Information Act, 2005, by the state government through a notification in the official gazette. The members are appointed by the governor on the recommendation of a selection committee consisting of the chief minister, the leader of the opposition in the legislative assembly and a cabinet minister nominated by the chief minister.

A short while before the state assembly elections in February 2022, the earlier government had advertised three vacancies for information commissions and the selection committee had recommended the names to the governor. The file was returned by the governor as the model of code of conduct had by then come in operation.

On assuming office, the new government had ordered a comparative study of the functioning of state election commission in different states. The workload of PSIC was compared with that of the information commissions of only two states — Haryana and Telangana. At the time of the study, PSIC had 10 members, including the CIC, while the other two states had six members each.

The study, according to RTI documents, revealed that that the average annual disposal rate of appeals and complaints per commissioner from August 2021 to June 2021 was 418 in Punjab as compared to 414 in Telangana and 1,214 in Haryana.

The number of appeals and complaints registered and disposed-off during the aforementioned period in Punjab was 5,884 and 3,938, respectively. In Telangana the figures were 6,041 and 2,310, respectively, while for Haryana these were 8,683 and 8,596, respectively.

The number of show cause notices issued during this period were 631 in Punjab, 287 in Telangana and 2,648 in Haryana, the documents show. The move to cut down on the number of information commissioners has also kicked up a debate amongst RTI activists.