The Uttarakhand Kranti Dal has strongly objected to the practice of appointing retired IAS officers as the Chief Information Commissioner in Uttarakhand stating that as per the Right To Information Act, bureaucrats are at the bottom of the list of eligible candidates for this post.
Addressing the media, UKD chief Trivendra Singh Panwar alleged that previous chief secretary N Ravishankar is said to be in line for the post of the State’s CIC, which gives ground to the allegation that he gave a clean chit to the alleged 2013 disaster relief scam accused in order to be appointed to the CIC’s post in return.
Panwar said, “It is unfortunate that the State is trying to appoint a retired IAS officer to the post of the CIC. One of the aims of the RTI Act, 2005 was to control the bureaucracy and enhance reliability of State works. For the last 10 years, the State has been appointing retired IAS officers to the post of CIC but now the people have realised that the State is using this post as a reward for bureaucrats loyal to it. The number of State Information Commissioner posts should also be decided according to the State’s population and work. There are States bigger than Uttarakhand which are functioning well with a couple of SICs. It is unfortunate that the people being considered by the State for the post of CIC are all suspected by the people of orchestrating a major cover up of anomalies in disaster relief works. The people had already opined that the previous chief secretary was offered the post of CIC for covering up the alleged 2013 disaster relief scam. It would have been different had he not applied for the CIC’s post after conducting the inquiry into the alleged disaster relief scam. However, his applying for the post has lent substance to allegations of cover up leveled against him,” said Panwar, adding that the UKD will agitate if Ravishankar is appointed the CIC.