PM, Advani to meet to finalise new CIC

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet Opposition Leader L K Advani and Law Minister Veerappa Moily on Friday to finalise the name of the new Chief Information Commissioner.

Shekhar Singh, a Delhi-based academician-turned right-to-information activist and head of the NGO, National Campaign for People's Right to Information, tops the list of names in hot consideration for the post.

Shekhar had quit the Indian Institute of Public Affairs in New Delhi in 2002 to launch his own NGO as an environmentalist and then floated another to focus on the RTI issues. His name came in the reckoning following complaints by NGOs that ex-bureaucrats remain too soft to the bureaucrats, defeating the purpose of the RTI Act.

The meeting, which will take place almost a month after incumbent CIC Wajahat Habibullah resigned, is being looked forward to by RTI activists who have been demanding transparency in the selection process and pressing for the appointment of a non-bureaucrat to the post. 

The government expects that Shekhar's appointment as the CIC may also blunt the resistance to its moves to amend the RTI Act to remove the officers' notings on files from its purview, as bureaucrats have become too reluctant to provide their honest views for fear of being nailed down later when their stand is exposed.