P Ramesh Kumar chosen to be Andhra Pradesh chief information commissioner

Hyderabad: Former bureaucrat P Ramesh Kumar has been chosen as the Andhra Pradesh chief information commissioner (CIC).

An  IAS officer belonging to the West Bengal cadre from the 1986 batch, Peyyala Ramesh Kumar is currently holding the post of member of the West Bengal Administrative Tribunal after his retirement in 2017. He will serve as CIC, a post that is presently vacant, for two years.

Sources said a high-level committee chaired by chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday cleared the former bureaucrat’s name in view of his clean track record and high level of integrity. His father Abbayyaa was also a conferred IAS officer in the undivided state of AP.

The committee also cleared the appointment of Rebaka Srinivasa Rao as information commissioner.

Hailing from Kadapa, Ramesh Kumar will be the first CIC of the residual state of Andhra Pradesh. There are four information commissioners as of now and all were appointed by the previous Telugu Desam regime which did not appoint a CIC in its five-year tenure. The commissioners were also appointed in 2018, a year after the High Court directed then state government to fill the posts at the earliest.

Leader of the opposition Chandrababu Naidu did not attend the meeting of the three-member committee in which Anil Kumar Yadav, irrigation minister, was also a member. Sources said Naidu who has been invited to the meeting did not even communicate to the government about his absence. Jagan Mohan Reddy also skipped a similar meeting in 2018 when he was leader of the opposition.