Ex-bureaucrat Raj Kumar Goyal sworn in as Chief Information Commissioner

New Delhi: 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 Chief Information Commissioner 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.