NEW DELHI: Former Defence Secretary RK Mathur was today sworn in as the eighth Chief Information Commissioner by President Pranab Mukherjee at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan here.
62-year-old Mathur, a retired IAS officer of Tripura cadre, completed his two-year fixed tenure as Defence Secretary in May last year.
As the CIC, he will have a tenure of about three years, till he attains the age of 65 years.
The oath ceremony could not be held earlier as the President was on a southern sojourn for 14 days and returned on December 31.
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led selection committee, which has Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and leader of Congress party in Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, as its members, had last year on December 16 selected Mathur as the new CIC.
The Central Information Commission has been headless twice since the BJP government came to power in 2014. Earlier, it was without a chief for nearly 10 months after the completion of the tenure of the then Chief Information Commissioner, Rajiv Mathur, in August, 2014.
It again fell vacant a month back following the retirement of Vijai Sharma.
At present, there are seven Information Commissioners — Basant Seth, Yashovardhan Azad, Sharat Sabharwal, Manjula Prasher, MA Khan Yusufi, Madabhushanam Sridhar Acharyulu and Sudhir Bhargava.
The Commission is made up of one chief and 10 Information Commissioners. The posts of three Information Commissioners are still vacant. (PTI)
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