State Information Commission: The Same 2019 Rule Shift, at State Level

The State Information Commission (SIC) is the RTI Act, 2005's own state-level appellate authority, created by Section 15 alongside the Central Information Commission this site's own Central Information Commission note already covers. Rather than repeat that Act's shared background, this chapter isolates where the SIC's own composition and appointment diverge from the CIC's, and the one genuinely federal twist in how its term of office is actually fixed.

Composition and appointment: a state-level mirror, with one twist

Section 15 gives a State Information Commission a State Chief Information Commissioner and up to ten State Information Commissioners, the identical numerical ceiling this site's CIC note already establishes for the Union body. The appointment committee mirrors the CIC's own structure one level down: the Governor appoints, on the recommendation of a committee consisting of the Chief Minister (Chairperson), the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, and a Cabinet Minister nominated by the Chief Minister, the same Prime Minister-led, Leader of Opposition, PM-nominated-Minister template the CIC note already describes, with the Governor and Chief Minister simply standing in for the President and Prime Minister.

Term of office: a Central Government rule governs even the state body

This is the chapter's real, easily-missed point, and it is worth stating precisely because it cuts against the pattern this site's other state-versus-Union notes have already established. Where most state-level offices are governed by state-specific rules or a state committee's own discretion, Section 16 of the RTI Act, exactly like Section 13 for the CIC, was amended by the same RTI (Amendment) Act, 2019 to remove a fixed term from the Act's own text and hand it to rules the Central Government prescribes, not the state government whose own Governor makes the appointment. The Right to Information Rules, 2019 set that term at three years, the identical figure and the identical rule-making authority this site's CIC note already establishes for the Union Commission. A State Information Commissioner's own tenure, in other words, is not decided by the state that appoints them at all; it is decided centrally, by the same rule that governs the CIC, applied uniformly across every state.

Quick revision points

• Section 15: State Chief Information Commissioner + up to 10 State Information Commissioners, appointed by the Governor.
• Appointment committee: Chief Minister (Chairperson), Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, a Cabinet Minister nominated by the Chief Minister, the state-level mirror of the CIC's PM-led committee.
• Section 16 (the SIC's own term-of-office clause) was amended by the RTI (Amendment) Act, 2019 in the same way as Section 13, removing a fixed term from the Act and handing it to Central Government rules.
• The Right to Information Rules, 2019 currently fix the term at 3 years for a State Information Commissioner, exactly as for the CIC, a genuinely federal point worth holding precisely: the Central Government, not the appointing state, sets this number.
• Commissioners in office before the 2019 Amendment continue under the Act's original terms; the rules-based term applies to appointments made after it.

The single fact this short chapter turns on is that a state body, appointed entirely through state-level machinery, still has its own members' tenure fixed by a rule the Union Government alone controls, the same mechanism, not merely a similar one, that governs the CIC.