Mathur takes oath as new CIC

Former defence secretary R.K. Mathur was on Monday sworn in as the eighth chief information commissioner by President Pranab Mukherjee at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan here.

Mr Mathur, 62, a retired IAS officer of Tripura-cadre, completed his two-year fixed tenure as defence secretary in May 2015.

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.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led selection committee, which has finance minister Arun Jaitley and leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge as its members, had in 2015 on December 16 selected Mr 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 Commiss-ioner 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, M.A. 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.