BHOPAL: People from judicial services, IAS and IPS officers, journalists and others are amongst the aspirants for the post of information commissioners (IC) in the state.
Besides, two applicants, hailing from Sehore, have shown ‘labourer’ as their occupation. As many as 117 applications have been received for the seven posts of information commissioner. They include 28 officers from judicial services, 17 former and present IAS officers, 5 ex-IPS officers and 12 journalists.
With leader of opposition being appointed, the appointment of ICs may be done soon. The applicants namely Mahendra Maheshwari and Brijesh hail from Sehore and have cited their occupation as labourers. Mahendra told Free Press that he works at a tailor shop. He wants to become IC to serve the nation. Mahendra said he had applied on seeing the advertisement in newspaper though he is not very hopeful of his selection. Brijesh is a barber by profession.
Amongst IAS officers, many are retired and some who are about to retire have applied. IPS officers namely former DGP Surendra Sing, Swarna Singh, NP Dwivedi, SS Lal and RS Meena have also applied. As far as former IAS officers are concerned, they include Madan Mohan Upadhyaya, MK Varshneya, JT Ekka, Raghuvir Shrivastava, Sudha Chaudhary, SB Singh, DP Ahirwar, GP Kabirpanthi, Surendra Upadhyaya, Rakesh Agarwal, CB Singh, Veena Ghanekar, Manish Shrivastava, RA Khandelwal and Akhilesh Kumar. GP Shrivastava and Urmila Mishra, who are going to retire in March, have also applied. Former ex-IFS officers namely Ratan Purwar, Mohd. Qasam Khan and Ashok Bhatia are also the applicants.
Some applicants are trying to influence the selection of IC through Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The selection committee includes chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, leader of opposition Ajay Singh and a minister to be nominated by the chief minister. Currently, KD Khan is working as chief information commissioner while Hiralal Trivedi, Sukhraj Singh and Atmadeep are information commissioners.
