Ex-bureaucrat Raj Kumar Goyal to take oath as CIC on Monday, 8 new Information Commissioners selected

Former IAS officer Raj Kumar Goyal will be sworn in as Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) by President Droupadi Murmu on Monday, officials said.

A three-member panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recommended Goyal’s name, they said on Saturday.

Goyal is a 1990-batch (retired) Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of 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 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.

President Murmu will administer the oath of office and secrecy to Goyal on Monday, the officials said.

The post of CIC fell vacant after Heeralal Samariya completed his term on September 13.

The panel, headed by PM Modi, has also recommended the names of eight Information Commissioners (ICs) in the transparency watchdog Central Information Commission during its meeting held on Wednesday.

With this, the Commission will be in its full strength, after a gap of over nine years, once the newly selected CIC and ICs join, according to transparency activists.

The Commission is headed by a CIC and can have a maximum of ten ICs. At present, Anandi Ramalingam and Vinod Kumar Tiwari have been working as the Information Commissioners.

Former Railway Board chief Jaya Verma Sinha, former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Swagat Das, who held key posts in 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 have been recommended for appointment as Information Commissioners, the officials said.

Senior journalists P R Ramesh and Ashutosh Chaturvedi, and Sudha Rani Relangi, Member (Legal), Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) have also been selected by the panel for appointment as ICs, they said.

Relangi has also worked as Director of Prosecution, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Joint Secretary & Legislative Counsel, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India, the officials said.

These eight Information Commissioners will subscribe to oath of office before the newly sworn in CIC, they said.

The names of CIC and eight ICs 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. Gandhi is learnt to have given a dissent note during the meeting, questioning the criterion adopted for the selection.