In a major embarrassment to Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy Government, Governor E S L Narasimhan on Tuesday returned the file relating to appointment of Information commissioners, who were allegedly having political affiliations.
According to sources, the Governor has returned the file of appointment of eight Information Commissioners under the RTI Act without ratification to the Kiran Kumar Reddy Government following public furore and controversy on the quality of selections. The Governor’s action has come on a day when the RTI activists were holding a people’s ballot in Hyderabad against the nominations done by the government after similar ballots held across the State last week.
While returning the file, the Governor has reportedly asked the government to reconsider their appointments.
The sources said that the Governor objected to the appointment of S Imtiaz Ahmed, M.Vijaya Nirmala and Lam Tantiya Kumari as Information Commissioners as none of them were known for having any experience in civil society activism, if not on Right to Information activism.
The Information Commissioners nominted by the government include C.Madhukar Raj, IFS (Retd), S Prabhakar Reddy, IPS (Retd), P Vijaya Babu, Editor of Andhra Prabha Telugu daily, Varre Venkateswarlu, social worker, Lam Tantiya Kumari, advocate (daughter of former deputy chief minister Koneru Ranga Rao), S Imtiaz Ahmed, retired civil judge, M Vijaya Nirmala, academician and M Ratan, currently DGP (Vigilance and Enforcement). Three of them were are alleged to be actively involved in politics and also contested the 2009 elections to the Legislative assembly as political party nominee
Earlier, TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu, who was a party for the selections initially, had sent a dissent note on the selection process and said that many of them were political nominees and others were bureaucrats, appointed on considerations, other than RTI activity.
–Agencies