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Giving orders on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging Sections 12 and 15 of the Right to Information Act, 2005, the Supreme Court on Thursday asked the government to appoint people with a legal or judicial background as its members. A bench of Justices AK Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar this was necessary as Central and State Information Commissions perform quasi-judicial functions. It also lifted the stay on appointment of information commissioners, but refuse to quash the sections. Currently, none of the eight members of the Central Information Commission (CIC), including the Chief Information Commissioner are from a judicial background. The CIC comprises one Chief Information Commissioner and 10 Information Commissioners. Presently, three posts of Information Commissioners are vacant in the CIC. The petition filed by one Namit Sharma had contended that since the work of the CIC under the RTI Act is mainly connected with the law, members in the transparency panel should have judicial background. However, government had opposed the petition contending that it could not be made mandatory that the members should have judicial background.

Supreme Court asks Govt to appoint people from legal background to CIC