At a meeting Wednesday of the three-member panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to choose the next Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners, and a Vigilance Commissioner, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi recorded his dissent while pointing out that the shortlists lacked names from the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, OBC, EBC and minority communities. The third member of the panel is Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Sources said Gandhi had asked the government several weeks ago to provide him with the caste composition of the applicants. The details were provided Wednesday and sources said only 7% of the applicants and one shortlisted candidate were from the backward communities. Gandhi flagged this at the meeting and submitted a detailed dissent note.
Gandhi, sources said, also said that the government was weakening the Right to Information Act, alleging that some of the shortlisted candidates had a record of not being transparent in their previous capacities.
He claimed that there had been a “systematic pattern” of “exclusion” of SC, ST, OBC, EBC and minority communities when it came to appointments to Constitutional and autonomous institutions. Sources said that after Gandhi raised the issue, there was an agreement to consider a few appointments from the limited applicant pool.
The meetings came a day after Gandhi said in Lok Sabha that he, as the Opposition nominee, had no voice in meetings of such panels. He was talking in the context of the selection of the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners, which, like the CIC and CVC selection panels, has the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, and a Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister as members.
“I sit in that room. It is a so-called democratic decision. On one side, PM Modi and Amit Shah and on the other side the LoP. I have no voice in that room. What they decide is what happens,” Gandhi told Lok Sabha Tuesday.
The post of the CIC has been lying vacant since September 13, when incumbent Heerala Samariya, a Dalit, demitted office on attaining the age of 65. Eight posts of Information Commissioners (ICs) too have been lying vacant for some years. The Commission, which can have up to ten Information Commissioners, now has only two Commissioners.
This is not the first time the Opposition has disagreed with the government on the appointment of the CIC. In fact, the appointment of Samariya in 2023 too had triggered a row with Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the Opposition member in the PM-led high-powered selection committee then, claiming that the government neither consulted nor informed him about his selection.
In 2020, Chowdhury had in the meeting of the selection panel opposed the appointment of former IFS officer and Information Commissioner Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha as the Chief Information Commissioner and journalist Uday Mahurkar as an Information Commissioner. Sinha and Mahurkar were appointed despite objections by Chowdhury in a dissent note he had submitted.
