New Delhi: Recent tweets by journalist Uday Mahurkar, who was made Information Commissioner by the Union government last year amidst questions over his impartiality, have strengthened the case for opposition parties who had alleged that Mahurkar was a supporter of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Mahurkar describes himself as one “wedded to true history” and “against appeasement and obscenity” on his Twitter profile. He also mentions here that he is the author of a book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, titled Marching with a Billion.
In some of his recent tweets, Mahurkar has shown his proximity to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological fountainhead of the BJP. On June 26, he tweeted images of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s visit to his residence.
Last month, Mahurkar retweeted Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who had lauded Bhagwat.
On July 27, he also tweeted on the Uniform Civil Code, noting that Pakistan was “given” to “Indian Muslims”.
Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who is also a member of the Selection Committee for appointment of Central Information Commissioners, given a dissent note during a meeting of the panel, citing Mahurkar’s proximity to BJP.
The meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Chowdhury had stated that his appointment was not in consonance with the Supreme Court directions. Chowdhury had also claimed that Mahurkar had not even made a formal application in response to the advertisement, was not among the 355 applicants to the position and that his name was ‘sky-dropped’ before his appointment.
The Wire had reported how Chowdhury had also stated that the Search Committee had failed to provide reasons on how it had found some candidates more suitable than the rest.
The Congress MP had said Mahurkar, then a senior deputy editor with India Today, was “an open supporter of the ruling political party and its ideology”.
‘Appointments are delayed so that they may be filled with party acolytes’
Last month in the Supreme Court too, the issue of Mahurkar’s appointment was flagged when the court took up the matter of delay in appointments of CICs despite its earlier directions.
During the arguments in the case, while mentioning how the pendency of cases at CIC had crossed 36,000 due to continuing vacancies, counsel for the petitioners, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, had also highlighted the manner in which CICs were appointed last year.
Referring to how the vacancies persisted despite the February 2019 direction of the Supreme Court to the Union government to start the process of filling up the posts two months before they fall vacant and its December 2019 direction to fill them within three months of their falling vacant, Bhushan had said: “The government initially does not fill up vacancies and if they do, they do it with party acolytes, one of them being a bogus journalist and bureaucrats. They (Union government) are destroying the RTI Act.”
With the matter – in which the petition was filed by Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri of Satark Nagrik Sangathan and RTI activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired) – again coming up for hearing on August 11, it now remains to be seen if the issue of conduct of the CICs would also find mention.
Talking to The Wire, Bharadwaj raised the manner in which some CICs were conducting themselves on social media. She said, “Under the RTI Act, information commissions have been set up to safeguard and facilitate people’s fundamental right to information. Information commissioners have been given wide-ranging powers, including directing public authorities to provide information to citizens even if the government is reluctant to share the information sought.”
Therefore, she added, “It is critical that the commissioners are independent and not perceived to be aligned to any political party, especially the party in power, so that they may uphold people’s right to access information without fear or favour. These tweets, coming from an information commissioner tasked with the function of oversight and ensuring transparency in government functioning, appear extremely concerning.”
This story first appeared on thewire.in