Former IAS officer Raj Kumar Goyal takes charge as CIC
Former IAS officer Raj Kumar Goyal
was on Monday sworn in as the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) by President Droupadi Murmu, filling a key vacancy at the helm of India’s transparency watchdog after nearly three months.
Goyal’s appointment follows a recommendation made last week by a three-member selection committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which also cleared the names of eight Information Commissioners, paving the way for the Central Information Commission (CIC) to function at full strength after more than nine years .
The post of CIC had fallen vacant after Heeralal Samariya completed his tenure on September 13 . The oath of office and secrecy was administered to Goyal at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan , attended by Vice President C P Radhakrishnan and Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh , among others.
The Chief Information Commissioner is appointed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 . There is no election process . The appointment is made by the President of India on the recommendation of a high-powered committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Union Home Minister, and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. In the latest round, the committee included PM Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi.
The RTI Act mandates that the CIC must be a person of eminence in public life with wide knowledge and experience in areas such as law, public administration, governance, journalism, or social service. The appointee must not be an active politician or hold any office of profit under the government.
The CIC heads the Central Information Commission, the apex body responsible for enforcing the RTI Act. The Commission adjudicates appeals and complaints related to denial of information by central government authorities, orders disclosure where required, and can impose penalties on officials for non-compliance. The Commission consists of a Chief Information Commissioner and up to 10 Information Commissioners.
Raj Kumar Goyal is a 1990-batch (retired) IAS officer of the 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. During his career, Goyal served as Secretary (Border Management) in the Ministry of Home Affairs and held several key administrative positions at the Centre and in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Along with Goyal’s appointment, the selection panel has recommended eight Information Commissioners, a move that transparency activists say will help address long-pending RTI cases and restore the Commission’s effectiveness after years of vacancies.