Info Commissioners Controversy

In a major embarrassment to the Kiran Kumar Reddy government, Governor E S L Narasimhan, on Tuesday, returned a file related to the appointment of Information Commissioners who allegedly had political affiliations.

According to sources, the Governor returned the file of appointment of 8 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 comes on a day when RTI activists held 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 reportedly asked the government to reconsider their appointments.

The sources said that the Governor had objected to the appointment of S Imtiaz Ahmed, M Vijaya Nirmala, Venkateswarlu and Lam Tantiya Kumari as Information Commissioners, as none of them were known to have had any experience in civil society activism, if not on Right To Information activism.

The Information Commissioners nominated by the government were C Madhukar Raj (IFS, Retd.), S Prabhakar Reddy (IPS Retd.), P Vijaya Babu (Editor of Telugu daily Andhra Prabha), Varre Venkateswarlu (social worker), Lam Tantiya Kumari (advocate and daughter of former deputy CM Koneru Ranga Rao), S Imtiaz Ahmed (retired civil judge), M Vijaya Nirmala (academician) and M Ratan (DGP, Vigilance & Enforcement).

3 of them were are alleged to have been actively involved in politics, and were also reported to have contested the 2009 elections to the Legislative Assembly as political party nominees

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. (INN)