Moving away from the practice of appointing the head from among the serving information commissioners, former defence secretary R.K.
Moving away from the practice of appointing the head from among the serving information commissioners, former defence secretary R.K. Mathur has been appointed the chief information commissioner on Friday. The post had fallen vacant after Vijai Sharma completed his tenure on December 1.
“R.K. Mathur has been selected as the Chief Information Commissioner,” minister of state for personnel Jitendra Singh told PTI. He will have a tenure of about three years, till he attains the age of 65 years.
62-year-old Mathur, a retired IAS officer of the Tripura cadre, was made the defence secretary for a fixed two-year term on May 28, 2013.
Mr Mathur, who did his graduation from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and post graduation from IIT, Delhi, has held various positions in his cadre state and at the Centre.
He has been secretary in both the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises, and defence production and supplies.
The Prime Minister-led selection committee, which has finance minister Arun Jaitley and leader of Congress in the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjuna Kharge, as its members, had on Wednesday finalised Mr Mathur’s name.
President Pranab Mukherjee has given his assent for the appointment. As per the RTI Act, a CIC is appointed by the President on the recommendation of the selection committee.
The Central Information Commission had been headless twice since the BJP government came into power in 2014. Earlier, it was without a chief for nearly 10 months after completion of the tenure of the then chief information commissioner Rajiv Mathur in August 2014.
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.
As per convention, the senior-most information commissioner is chosen as chief. Presently, Mr Seth is the senior-most information commissioner. The commission comprises of one chief and ten information commissioners. There is still vacancy of three information commissioners.
