The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Centre and the state governments to take steps to fill the vacancies in the Central Information Commission (CIC) and state information commissions (SICs), saying otherwise the 2005 law on the right to information will become a dead letter.

A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala, and Justice Manoj Misra also asked the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to collect information from all states on aspects including the sanctioned strength of information commissioners in the SICs, vacancies at present, and the total number of pending cases there.

Voicing concern over the vacancies, the Chief Justice said the Right to Information Act of 2005 will become a dead letter.

The petitioner said the SICs in states like Jharkhand, Tripura, and Telangana have become defunct as there are no serving information commissioners.

The petitioner said that the Centre and states have not followed the top court’s 2019 judgement on issues including the timely filling up of vacancies at the CIC and SICs. The top court had in December 2019 directed the Centre and state governments to appoint information commissioners within three months at the CIC and SICs, observing there was a need to evolve guidelines to stop misuse of the Right to Information Act.