New Delhi: The meeting of Selection Committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to decide the new chief of Central Information Commission (CIC), which was headless for over a week, has been deferred for next week.
The meeting was to take place on Friday at Parliament House but now it has been deferred for next week, official sources said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjuna Kharge, are members of the three-member panel. The meeting is likely to take place next week, they said.
The transparency watchdog has gone headless, for the second time since the BJP Government came into power in 2014, after Vijai Sharma completed his tenure on December 1.
Sharma was appointed to the post on June 9, this year. The CIC was without its chief for nearly 10 months after the completion of the tenure of the then Chief Information Commissioner Rajiv Mathur in August 2014.
A total of 33,619 complaints and appeals are pending in the Commission as on today, as per official data. The watchdog comprises of one chief and ten Information Commissioners.
At present, there are seven Information Commissioners: Basant Seth, Yashovardhan Azad, Sharat Sabharwal, Manjula Prasher, M A Khan Yusufi, Madabhushanam Sridhar Acharyulu and Sudhir Bhargava, in the Commission. As per convention, the senior most Information Commissioner, presently Seth, is chosen as chief.
