President Pranab Mukherjee will on Monday administer the oath of office to new Chief Information Commissioner R K Mathur.
The Central Information Commission has been headless for about a month after Vijai Sharma completed his tenure on December 1.
"The oath ceremony will be held on Monday in Rashtrapati Bhavan," a senior official in Department of Personnel and Training said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led selection committee, which has Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and leader of Congress Party in Lok Sabha Mallikarjuna Kharge as its members, had on December 16 selected Mathur, the former Defence Secretary, as the new CIC.
As per RTI Act, the CIC is appointed by the President on the recommendation of the selection committee.
62-year-old Mathur, a retired IAS officer of Tripura cadre, was made Defence Secretary for a fixed two-year term on May 28, 2013. As CIC, he will have 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 southern sojourn for 14 days. He has come back today.
The Central Information Commission has been headless twice since the BJP government came into power in 2014. Earlier, it was without a chief for nearly 10 months after completion of the tenure of the then Chief Information Commissioner Rajiv Mathur in August 2014.
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 comprises of one chief and 10 Information Commissioners. There is still vacancy of three Information Commissioners.
A total of 33,630 complaints and appeals are pending in the Commission, as per official data.
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Later, a press release issued by Rashtrapati Bhavan said the oath ceremony will take place on Monday.
"On January 4, 2016, the President will administer the oath of office to Chief Information Commissioner designate R K Mathur," it said.
