TEAM HERALD
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PANJIM: After a long delay, Goa may finally have a State information commissioner (SIC) as per assurances given by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar to the House Tuesday, who said that the government would appoint someone to the post within a month.
Parrikar was replying to a Zero Hour notice in the Goa Assembly over the delay in the appointment of an Information Commissioner, owing to which an RTI activist threatened to sit on an indefinite hunger strike.
Replying to the notice raised by Curchorem BJP MLA Nilesh Cabral, the chief minister said, “Even though the RTI Act does not require me to advertise the post, I will do so to widen the scope for selection.” He said that he would invite applications for the post within a week.
Parrikar informed the House that two previous attempts to appoint an Information Commissioner had failed and recalled both cases in his detailed reply to the MLAs.
One delay was on account of an Apex Court verdict in the matter where it reverted its own judgement that the State Chief Information Commissioner has to be a retired judge.
He said, “It turned out to be contrary to the RTI Act as knowledge of law is one of the criteria preferred in the selection of an Information Commissioner.”
Due this verdict there was a delay in the appointment of an Information Commissioner at a time when retired officer Pradip Padwal was short-listed for the post and had to withdraw on account of the court verdict.
“This was no fault of the government,” said Parrikar.
In another attempt, he said that the government had selected Pandurang Nadkarni, an upright person for the post. “However attempts to malign him by some RTI activist compelled him to withdraw out of disgust,” he said.
This will be third time that the government will attempt to appoint an Information Commissioner.
The chief minister turned down a suggestion, from Dabolim MLA Mauvin Godinho to select a candidate from the existing list, on the grounds that some may not want to be in the fray due to unnecessary criticism against them.
Parrikar said that there is no person who has not committed any mistake at any given time in his life and it was unfair for activists to target people unnecessarily. He said people with non-political backgrounds will not be interested in taking such posts as it becomes difficult to digest false allegations against them as happened in the government’s first choice of Nadkarni.
He reiterated that the government wants persons who are knowledgeable on all fronts including legal front as Information Commissioner and an additional criteria would be the person has to be thick skinned to criticism.
