CIC rebuilds bench to hear complaints against parties

Chief Information Commissioner R K Mathur has constituted a larger bench to hear complaints against six national political parties not adhering to the CIC order bringing them within the ambit of the RTI Act.

The bench will replace a three-member panel headed by Sridhar Acharyulu which was hearing the matter since July 22, 2016 until one of its members Bimal Julka decided to recuse himself citing workload. After his recusal, Mathur had put the matter in abeyance till further notice.

Surprisingly, no member of the previous three-member bench headed by Acharyulu, which had heard the matter for nearly five months, has found a place on the new panel.

Earlier, Acharyulu was taken off cases pertaining to Ministry of Human Resource Development after he had ordered disclosure of academic records of the BA course of Delhi University of 1978, the year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is understood to have passed the examination.

Besides Mathur himself, the new Bench will have Information Commissioners-Sharat Sabharwal, Manjula Prasher and Divya Prakash Sinha.

The new Bench will start hearing the matter from August 16.

The bench has issued notices to the leaders of political parties — Rajnath Singh of BJP, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BSP's Mayawati, Sharad Pawar of NCP, Sudhakar Reddy of CPI and CPI-M's Prakash Karat.