Transparency watchdog Central Information Commission attained its full strength after a gap of nine years, with the appointment of former IAS officer Raj Kumar Goyal as its chief and eight other information commissioners, who took the oath of office on Monday.
President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath of office to Goyal as the chief information commissioner (CIC) at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, her office said in a communique.The event was attended by Vice President C P Radhakrishnan and Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, among others.A three-member panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week recommended their names for the appointment.
Goyal is a 1990-batch (retired) IAS officer of the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre. He superannuated as secretary, Department of Justice under the Ministry of Law and Justice, on August 31.He has also served as secretary (border management) in the Home Ministry and held key posts both at the Centre and in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The post of CIC fell vacant after Heeralal Samariya completed his term on September 13.The Commission is headed by a CIC and can have a maximum of 10 information commissioners.Transparency campaigner Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd) said it is after a gap of nine years that the Central Information Commission is in full strength.
"We have high expectations from the newly appointed team of the Commission, who all will be the guardians of transparency. Hope they will perform with high efficiency in discharging their duties as mandated in the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005," he said.
CIC Goyal, in the presence of incumbent Information Commissioners -- Anandi Ramalingam and Vinod Kumar Tiwari -- administered the oath of office to eight new appointees at the swearing-in ceremony held at the Commission's office here.
They included former Railway Board chief Jaya Verma Sinha, former IPS officer Swagat Das -- who held key posts in the Intelligence Bureau, Home Ministry and Cabinet Secretariat, among others -- the then Central Secretariat Service (CSS) officer Sanjeev Kumar Jindal, former IAS officer Surendra Singh Meena and ex-Indian Forest Service officer Khushwant Singh Sethi.Senior journalists P R Ramesh and Ashutosh Chaturvedi, and former Indian Legal Service officer Sudha Rani Relangi, have also been sworn in as information commissioners.
Relangi has also worked as the director of prosecution, Central Bureau of Investigation and joint secretary and legislative counsel in the Ministry of Law and Justice.The names of the CIC and eight information commissioners were cleared during the meeting of the Modi-led committee comprising Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, on Wednesday.
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