Sudhir Bhargava new CIC, govt appoints four information commissioners
New Delhi, Dec 31: The government has appointed Sudhir Bhargava as Chief Information Commissioner, along with four information commissioners, all of whom were bureaucrats, in the Central Information Commission.
Bhargava was Information Commissioner in the CIC. The panel was functioning with three members against the sanctioned strength of 11, including the chief information commissioner.
President Ram Nath Kovind has approved the appointment of former IFS officer Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha, ex-IRS officer Vanaja N Sarna, former IAS Neeraj Kumar Gupta and former law secretary Suresh Chandra as information commissioners in the panel, a government order, accessed by PTI, said.
Sinha is a 1981-batch Indian Foreign Service officer who was the High Commissioner of India in the United Kingdom.
An alumnus of St Michael's High School in Patna and St Stephen's College in Delhi, Sinha had served a number of important postings in the Ministry of External Affairs including the crucial Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran Division, which he headed for four years as additional secretary.
The only woman in the CIC will be Sarna, a 1980-batch Indian Revenue Service (Customs and Excise) officer, who was the chief of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC).
Neeraj Kumar Gupta, a 1982-batch IAS officer, was secretary in the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, while Chandra was an Indian Legal Service officer, who retired as Union law secretary this year. Between 2002 and 2004, Chandra was the private secretary to then law minister Arun Jaitley.
All the bureaucrats appointed by the government have retired this year.
After recent retirements of Chief Information Commissioner R K Mathur and Information Commissioners Yashovardhan Azad, Sridhar Acharyulu and Amitava Bhattacharyya, the panel, the highest adjudicating authority in RTI matters, was left with three Information Commissioners, prompting activists to approach the Supreme Court on the issue of vacancies.
The Supreme Court had asked the Centre and states to maintain transparency in appointments of Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners and upload the details of search committees and applicants on their website.
Commenting on the appointment process, Commodore Lokesh Batra, one of the petitioners in the case, said the government has failed to comply with the Supreme Court directions of posting the details on the website.
"As my gut feeling said, the government did not comply with the Supreme Court directions viz transparency as it did not post details on its website," Batra told PTI.
During the hearing, the Centre had told the top court that the search committee has shortlisted names for the post of CIC and a final decision will be taken soon.
A bench of Justices A K Sikri, S Abdul Nazeer and R Subhash Reddy asked the Centre to put on the website details of search committee for CIC and information commissioners.
Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for the Centre, had informed the court that a total of 65 applications were received for the CIC post and 280 applications for the post of four ICs in the Central Information Commission.
She had said after these posts are filled up, notification will be issued for inviting applications for remaining posts of ICs.
The Centre seems to have ignored the plea of former Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu who had called for adequate representation of non-bureaucrats in the commission in accordance with the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
Citing Section 12 (5) of the RTI Act, he had written to the President that the Act provides for selecting people of eminence, having experience in law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism, mass media or administration and governance.
If the government selects more number of former bureaucrats for these posts, it will be a breach of the letter and spirit of the transparency law and more particularly that of Section 12(5) of the RTI Act, which may not stand the scrutiny by the judiciary, he argued.
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19-yr-old woman found hanging from tree in UP village; juvenile held
Lucknow/Pratapgarh (UP) (PTI): Police have apprehended a 16-year-old boy for his alleged involvement in the rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in a village here, officials said on Monday.
Additional Superintendent of Police (West), Brijnandan Rai, said that the body of a 19-year-old woman was found hanging from a tree in an orchard in the Manikpur police station area on Sunday morning. A post-mortem examination subsequently confirmed that she had been raped.
Police registered a case against unidentified persons under sections 103(1) (punishment for murder) and 70(1) (gangrape) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and initiated an investigation.
During the course of the investigation, the police found that the deceased was in contact with a juvenile who was also her relative.
Acting on this information, during a joint checking operation, sub-inspector Amit Kumar Singh of Manikpur police station and SOG In-charge Amit Kumar Chaurasia, along with their team, apprehended the 16-year-old near the Lehdari Ganga River bridge.
The search for other accused persons is ongoing, police said.
According to the police, the woman had gone to sleep after dinner on Saturday night but was found hanging in an orchard nearly 400 metres away from her home the following morning.
Additional Superintendent of Police (West), Brijnandan Rai, had earlier said that the circumstances suggest foul play.
"The victim's slippers and undergarments were recovered 50 metres away from the spot where the body was found. There are visible injury marks on her body," Rai said.
While locals have alleged that the woman was murdered after being raped, the ASP said that it is "prima facie a case of murder."
"Based on the complaint filed by the victim's brother, a case of murder has been registered against unidentified persons," the officer added.
Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, in a post on X in Hindi on Monday, said, "The news of the heinous murder of a Dalit daughter in Pratapgarh is deeply tragic and condemnable."
"The question remains: why does the spate of murders of 'PDA daughters' continue unabated in Uttar Pradesh? Are the BJP government's claims regarding women's safety merely hollow rhetoric, or is there, in fact, discrimination even in the provision of security for women?" he said.
"Whenever the 'wandering Honourable (ghumantu maananiye)' finds a moment of respite from election campaigning, he should cast a glance at the plight of the daughters of his own Uttar Pradesh. In any case, apart from injustice and oppression, no sister, daughter, or mother of this state holds any hope from you," Yadav added.
