Lucknow, July 01: The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court on Wednesday directed the Uttar Pradesh government to file its response by July 10 on a Public Interest Litigation challenging appointment of Ranjeet Singh Pankaj as the Chief Information Commissioner.
The order was passed by the bench comprising Justices Rajiv Sharma and Satish Chandra on the PIL filed by a lawyer Himanshu Shekhar Awasthi.
On behalf of the petitioner, senior advocate Virendra Bhatia contended that that legal provisions were violated in appointment of Pankaj as the CIC.
Pankaj, an 1992 batch IAS officer, was administered oath as the new CIC by Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekar Singh yesterday.
Before his appointment as the CIC, Pankaj was posted as secretary in the mining department from where he took voluntary retirement.
—Agencies