Former defence secretary RK Mathur has sworn in as the eighth Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) by President Pranab Mukherjee at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi. 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.

As the CIC, Mr. Mathur will have tenure of about three years, till he attains the age of 65 years. 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-CIC, 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.