Bhopal: Political heat is now on in Madhya Pradesh as more than 15000 cases are still pending in the state’s State Information Commission. Congress leader Digvijay Singh has sent a letter to the CM, Dr Mohan Yadav, to provide staff in the information commission department as early as possible. Singh also pointed out that in the last two decades, the state government has not even grown enough courage to appoint 10 information commissioners at the same time.
Currently, the government has only appointed the Chief Information Commissioner and three other commissioners, and according to Singh, the government should clear the applications and make recommendations on the number of commissioners to appoint within a certain period. He also uses government bias in this process by raising questions about the partisanship of the government.
Criticising the government for not showing concern over these appointments, Digvijay Singh said that those approaching government departments under the Right to Information Act are left to their own devices because of the commission’s non-performance. Singh stated that being an information commissioner, he has not received any orders in the last three months from the Madhya Pradesh government regarding the shortage of information commissioners that the Centre mandated the state government to buck up on.
The senior Congress leader also pointed out to the chief minister that the RTI ACT was passed in the year 2005 when Dr Manmohan Singh was the prime minister of India. This law requires state governments to appoint a Chief Information Commissioner and other commissioners. But, 10 positions have not been filled ever since the act came into force in Madhya Pradesh, which, according to Singh, is a conspiracy to demoralize the RTI Act.
He also said that the majority of the state’s corruption cases in the last two decades have been exposed through RTI applications. He feels that the state government is slowly sabotaging the RTI mechanism in a bid to avoid being pulled up for non-performance.
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