Raj Kumar Goyal Sworn In as Chief Information Commissioner

New Delhi, Dec 15: Former IAS officer Raj Kumar Goyal was on Monday sworn in as the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) by President Droupadi Murmu, filling the vacancy at the helm of the Central Information Commission.

Goyal’s appointment was recommended last week by a three-member selection panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. President Murmu administered the oath of office and secrecy to him at a ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan, which was attended by Vice President C P Radhakrishnan and Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, among others.

A 1990-batch (retired) Indian Administrative Service officer of the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre, Goyal superannuated on August 31 as Secretary, Department of Justice under the Ministry of Law and Justice. During his career, he also served as Secretary (Border Management) in the Ministry of Home Affairs and held several key positions at the Centre and in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The post of Chief Information Commissioner had fallen vacant after Heeralal Samariya completed his tenure on September 13.

The selection panel, led by the Prime Minister and comprising Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, has also recommended the appointment of eight Information Commissioners. With their induction, the Central Information Commission will attain full strength after a gap of more than nine years, transparency activists said.

The commission, headed by the CIC, can have a maximum of 10 Information Commissioners. At present, Anandi Ramalingam and Vinod Kumar Tiwari are serving as Information Commissioners.

Officials said those recommended for appointment as Information Commissioners include former Railway Board chairperson Jaya Verma Sinha; former IPS officer Swagat Das, who served in the Intelligence Bureau, Home Ministry and Cabinet Secretariat; Central Secretariat Service officer Sanjeev Kumar Jindal; former IAS officer Surendra Singh Meena; and former Indian Forest Service officer Khushwant Singh Sethi.

Senior journalists P R Ramesh and Ashutosh Chaturvedi, along with Sudha Rani Relangi, Member (Legal) of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board, have also been selected. Relangi has previously served as Director of Prosecution in the Central Bureau of Investigation and as Joint Secretary and Legislative Counsel in the Ministry of Law and Justice, officials said. (Agencies)