New Delhi: Information commissioner Sridhar Acharyalu has questioned the way chief information commissioner R.K. Mathur dissolved and reconstituted a bench that was hearing complaints against some political parties.
Acharyalu said the move raised "serious questions" about the "independence of individual information commissioner(s), who can be part of a bench for some time and not for some other, against his will, without his consent and without a reason or without giving a reason".
"Can a larger bench be constituted without reference from the existing bench?" Acharyalu asked in a scathing February 22 letter addressed to Mathur.
The letter, accessed by PTI and circulated among all information commissioners at a recent meeting, followed another on February 7.
That letter too had raised questions about the way Mathur had dissolved the bench of Acharyulu, Sudhir Bhargava and Bimal Julka that was hearing complaints against six parties – the BJP, Congress, BSP, NCP, CPI and the CPM.
The bench had heard the case for six months in 2016 but, in December that year, Julka had recused himself citing pending work. Mathur had constituted a new bench in August 2017 but it didn’t include any members of the previous bench.
Earlier, in January 2017, Acharyulu had been divested of hearing RTI matters related to the human resource development ministry.
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