RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, Sept.14: The Congress high command and its senior political leaders who do not miss any opportunity to tom-tom about having brought in the RTI Act but the way information commission is working in the state despite being a Congress supported government in power for last one and a half years suggests that the party’s presence in the government is perfunctory at best as nothing has been done so far to improve the condition of the commission.
First, the commission became useless. All the posts of information commissioners became vacant after Information Commissioner Himanshu Shekhar Chaudhary retired on May 8 last year and the commission stopped receiving and hearing complaints related to violation of the Right to Information Act 2005. Its condition has become so poor that even staff working for the commission have started struggling for their salary payment.
An insider informed this to Lagatar24.com saying the staff have not got their payment for the last two months as there is no one to exercise his financial power.
“After secretary Abhishek Srivastava superannuated in June, no one came with power to disburse the salary of staff and the situation of non-payment of salary came. Though the commission hardly spends Rs 10 lakh per month in salary head,” an aggrieved staff said.
An under secretary deputed at the commission, Sudesh Kumar Verma, confirmed this situation saying steps have been taken for salary payment within a day or two.
“New secretary Rakhal Chandra Besra has joined. All steps have been taken to ensure that he can exercise financial power. I hope the salary will be disbursed within a day or two,” Verma said.
Personnel and administrative reform department joint secretary Sudhir Ranjan echoed Verma when asked about the delay in payment and said payment will be done soon.
Another staff of the personnel and administrative department said proper steps are also being taken to ensure that all staff get their salary by the fifth of every month. “We have black-listed and changed the old agency, SBC, through which payment is given to staff and appointed a new agency M4 Solution for the work,” the insider said.
Jharkhand State Information Commission, running at Engineers Hostel-2, H.E.C. Campus, Dhurwa, Ranchi, was constituted by the State Government Vide Notification No.:-3825 dated 24.07.2006. The first Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Justice Hari Shankar Prasad (Retd.) took the oath of office on 30.07.2006 and continued till 30.06.2008. Other six Information Commissioners who had taken the oath of office simultaneously, continued till July 2011.
Thereafter Justice Dilip Kumar Sinha (Retd.) took the oath of the office of (CIC) on 05.08.2011 and he continued till 31.07.2014. The Chief Information Commissioner Aditya Swarup IAS (Retd.) took the Oath of the office on 24.04.2015. Two State Information Commissioners Prabodh Ranjan Dash and Himanshu Shekhar Choudhary joined the commission on 03-04-2013 and 09-05-2015 respectively. For the last sixteen months there is no one to take up the case and the website suggests that all work of accepting the application and hearing the case is suspended.
