Chief Information Commission has formed a four-member bench to hear complaints against six national political parties for not adhering to its order of bringing them under the Right to Information Act, reported PTI on Wednesday. The six parties are the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
It will start hearing the matter from August 16. Apart from Chief Information Commissioner RK Mathur (pictured above), the new bench has Sharat Sabharwal, Manjula Prasher and Divya Prakash Sinha as members. The bench has issued notices to the politicians who were heads of these six parties when the matter was first heard in July 2016.
Earlier, a three-member bench headed by Sridhar Acharyulu had taken up the matter. But after one of the members, Bimal Julka, decided to recuse himself, Mathur had put the matter on hold. However, none of three judges from the old bench have made it to Mathur’s reconstituted panel.
The six national parties had been brought under the ambit of the RTI Act by an order of the CIC on June 3, 2013.
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