RAIPUR: Chhattisgarh High Court has served a notice to the state government in response to the PIL filed on “flouting of norms” in the appointment of the chief information commissioner (CIC).
A retired additional chief secretary (ACS) who was then facing a probe by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) was sworn in as CIC by the Chhattisgarh Governor in December last year, barely ten days after his retirement.
The petitioner Rakesh Choubey alleged that the prescribed procedure laid down as guidelines under the RTI Act was ignored while appointing Raut as the CIC and said, “the retired bureaucrat has been selectively picked-up without seeking his past credentials and the usual vigilance report for such post”.
“The tenure of previous chief information commissioner was over in March 2016. So in between the one year and a half how many applications were received for the given post, and whether there was any scrutiny procedure followed? The state government should tell”, Choubey stated.
The plea to the court was in the context of Section 15 (3) of the RTI Act where the candidate shall 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.
How the person appointed for the given post is qualified to be of eminence needs to specifically stated while finalising the name for appointment, which was apparently not done in contravention the Section 15 (3) and whether his candidature had gone through any scrutiny committee, the petitioner asked.
After the appointment of Raut as the chief information commissioner there is widespread notion prevailing that the opportunities for the given post were not offered by the state through wide publicity.
“Within three days of the acceptance of his application for the CIC post Raut was appointed merely on his biodata. The process of transparency were thrown to wind for appointment to such crucial post”, Choubey claimed citing the inputs he gathered under the RTI.