Former Justice Secretary Raj Kumar Goyal takes oath as Chief Information Commissioner

Later in the day, the Department of Personnel and Training published the appointment notification. “The President, on the recommendations of the committee constituted under sub-section (3) of Section 12 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (22 of 2005), is pleased to appoint Shri Raj Kumar Goyal as the Chief Information Commissioner in the Central Information Commission with effect from the forenoon of 15th December, 2025,” the notification read. As per the rules, the term of a CIC is three years.

The appointment of Goyal fills the post that has been vacant since September, when the previous CIC, Heeralal Samariya, demitted office.

Goyal was a 1990-batch officer of the Jammu and Kashmir cadre and later the Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, and Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre when the state of Jammu and Kashmir was downgraded to a UT in 2019.

He retired in August this year from the post of Secretary, Department of Justice in the Ministry of Law and Justice. Before that, he had served in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

Last week, a three-member committee comprising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi met to decide on the appointment of the CIC, the Chief Vigilance Commissioner, and the Information Commissioners.

Gandhi recorded his dissent to the decisions, citing the lack of candidates from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes (OBC), Economically Backward Classes (EBCs) and minority communities in the shortlist.

The Central Information Commission is headed by the CIC and can have a maximum of 10 Information Commissioners. At present, Anandi Ramalingam and Vinod Kumar Tiwari are the Information Commissioners.

Former Railway Board chief Jaya Verma Sinha; former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Swagat Das, who held key posts in Intelligence Bureau, Home Ministry and Cabinet Secretariat, among others; former Central Secretariat Service (CSS) officer Sanjeev Kumar Jindal; former IAS officer Surendra Singh Meena; and former Indian Forest Service officer Khushwant Singh Sethi have also been recommended for appointment as Information Commissioners, officials said.

(With inputs from PTI)