Info commissioner moves HC over ‘forced’ removal

VINEY KAPOOR MEHRA IS ON EXTRAORDINARY LEAVE TILL SEPTEMBER 2019 FROM THE UNIVERSITY AND HAS NOT BEEN CLAIMING ANY SALARY

CHANDIGARH: State information commissioner (SIC) Viney Kapoor Mehra has approached the Punjab and Haryana high court alleging forced removal from her post by the Congress government.

Mehra, a Guru Nanak Dev University professor, was appointed by the previous SADBJP government on September 1, 2016, for five years. She is on extraordinary leave till September 2019 from the varsity and not claiming any salary.

Mehra told the court that she has been told to either resign from the info commission or from the varsity.

Her counsels, senior advocate Chetan Mittal and Puneet Gupta, had stated that since May 2017, secretary, department of governance reforms, started pressuring her to resign.

In November 2017, she was told to resign from one of the posts against which she filed a representation before the government. But the same was rejected on January 3, 2018, without giving any reason.

Mittal argued that Section 17 (1) of the Right to Information Act-2005 provides that SIC shall be removed from the office on the grounds of proved misbehaviour or upon some inquiry into wronging indicting him/ her.

But there was no such situation in the current case, Mittal told court, adding that her employer was the GNDU and not the state and in no way she was holding any ‘office of profit’.

The counsel also brought before court that Mehra had also been discriminated against viz-a-viz counterparts working as commissioner(s) in other panels with teaching background, hence the decision of the government be quashed.

The matter was taken up by the high court bench of justice Jaswant Singh and adjourned till February 2 on request from the state government’s counsel to examine the issue.