Raj Kumar Goyal Sworn In As Chief Information Commissioner

NEW DELHI: Former IAS officer Raj Kumar Goyal was sworn in as the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) by President Droupadi Murmu on Monday.

The President administered the oath of office and secrecy to Goyal at a ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The event was attended by Vice President C.P. Radhakrishnan, Union minister of state for personnel Jitendra Singh, and other dignitaries.

A three-member panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last week recommended Goyal’s name for appointment as the CIC.

Goyal is a retired 1990-batch Indian Administrative Service officer of the Arunachal Pradesh–Goa–Mizoram–Union Territories 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 Union home ministry and held several key positions at the Centre and in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. The post of CIC had fallen vacant after Heeralal Samariya completed his term on September 13.

The Modi-led panel has also recommended the names of eight Information Commissioners to the Central Information Commission during a meeting held last week. With these appointments, the Commission will attain full strength for the first time in nine years once the newly selected CIC and Information Commissioners assume office.

The Central Information Commission is headed by the Chief Information Commissioner and can have a maximum of 10 Information Commissioners. At present, Anandi Ramalingam and Vinod Kumar Tiwari are serving as Information Commissioners.

Among those recommended for appointment as Information Commissioners are former Railway Board chairman Jaya Verma Sinha; former Indian Police Service officer Swagat Das, who has served in the Intelligence Bureau, Union home ministry and the Cabinet Secretariat; Central Secretariat Service officer Sanjeev Kumar Jindal; former IAS officer Surendra Singh Meena; and former Indian Forest Service officer Khushwant Singh Sethi, officials said.

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

Relangi has earlier served as director of prosecution in the CBI and as joint secretary and Legislative Counsel in the ministry of law and justice.

The names of the CIC and the eight Information Commissioners were cleared at a meeting of the selection committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which also included Union home minister Amit Shah and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.