Former Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi and transparency activist Aruna Roy disagreed with the apex court that persons from judicial background or lawyers with experience of 20 years would better serve as information commissioners as the job requires balancing act.
"That balance does not mean that there has to be lawyers and judges in the panel. The only thing required is transparent and rational method of selection of information commissioners," their counsel Prashant Bhushan submitted before a bench of justices A K Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar.
He further submitted that there was no surety that lawyers and judges would always perform a balancing act in answering queries as "there are lawyers who are quacks and there are judges who are quacks who do not know law."
The bench said it was emphasising on the balancing aspect because there have been several orders in the recent past which were "chaotic".
"Some of these orders are chaotic. There is no balance and they are absolutely chaotic," the bench said.
Bhushan said he along with Gandhi and Roy were actively involved in the drafting of the Right to Information (RTI) Act and they are of the view that implementing this particular direction in the September 13 judgement would "frustrate" the purpose of the law.
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He said under the RTI Act there can only be 10 bench and if each bench would comprise of two members it will become half and badly affect the functioning of the Central Information Commission in view of the backlog.
"This will frustrate the whole objective of the Act," he said, adding that "this part of judgement (appointment of lawyers or persons with judicial background as members of information panel) is legally not correct," he said. (MORE)