Govt Appoints Heeralal Samariya As The New Chief Information Commissioner

The position had become vacant after Y K Sinha's term ended on October 3.

The Rashtrapati Bhawan said in a press communique that President Murmu administered the oath to Samairya, a 1985-batch officer, at a function attended by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others. Samairya is the first Dalit officer to occupy this coveted position.

The body headed by the CIC can have a maximum of 10 information commissioners. These positions were created to empower citizens and allow them to seek information on public issues from the government.

After Samariya’s appointment, eight positions for information commissioners are vacant. There are two information commissioners at present.

The government moved to appoint Samariya as the CIC after the Supreme Court on October 30 directed the Centre and the state governments to take steps to fill the vacant posts of information commissioners, saying otherwise the 2005 law on Right to Information will become a “dead letter”.

Taking a serious note of vacancies in the CIC and state information commissions (SICs), a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra had also asked the Department of Personnel and Training to collect information from all states on aspects, including the sanctioned strength of information commissioners in the SICs vacancies at present and the total number of pending cases there.