Ex-bureaucrat 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 Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) by President Droupadi Murmu.

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

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 has 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 administered the oath of office and secrecy to Goyal at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The event was attended by Vice President C P Radhakrishnan and Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, among others.

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 in the transparency watchdog Central Information Commission during a meeting held on Wednesday.

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 10 information commissioners. At present, Anandi Ramalingam and Vinod Kumar Tiwari are 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, 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, 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 information commissioners, they said.

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

The names of CIC and eight information commissioners 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.