Former IAS officer Heeralal Samariya was on Monday sworn in as the Chief Information Commissioner by President Droupadi Murmu. The post was lying vacant following the completion of Y K Sinha’s tenure on October 3. Samariya, the first Dalit to have been appointed to the post, was working as information commissioner in the transparency panel Central Information Commission (CIC).
A 1985-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Telangana cadre, Samariya retired after serving as the Labour and Employment Secretary in the government of India. He was sworn in as the Information Commissioner on November 7, 2020. The swearing-in ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan was attended by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh among others. The Supreme Court had on October 30 asked the Centre and the state governments to take steps to fill the post, saying otherwise the 2005 law on the Right to Information would become a “dead letter”
