President Draupadi Murmu on Monday administered the oath of office to senior bureaucrat Heeralal Samariya as the chief of the Central Information Commission (CIC). He is the first Dalit person in the country to be made the Chief Information Commissioner. Samariya has also worked as Secretary in the Ministry of Labor and Employment before holding this position.

He was born in a remote village Pahadi in the Bharatpur district of Rajasthan. The CIC’s top post that Samariya holds now was lying vacant after YK Sinha’s term ended on October 3. President Murmu administered the oath of office to Samariya at a function in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, officials said.

Eight vacancies still exist

After Samariya’s appointment as the Chief Information Commissioner, there still exists a vacancy of eight Information Commissioners. Currently, there are just two information commissioners on the commission.  The commission that the Chief Information Commissioner heads can have a maximum of 10 information commissioners.

This appointment comes after the Supreme Court 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”.

Taking a serious note of vacancies in the CIC and state information commissions (SICs), a bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra had also asked the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to collect information from all states on the aspects, including the sanctioned strength of information commissioners in the SICs, vacancies at present and the total number of pending cases there.

Who is Heeralal Samariya?

Heeralal Samariya is a 1985 batch IAS officer and a resident of the Bharatpur district of Rajasthan. He was born on 14 September 1960 in a village named Pahadi. He obtained a BE (Civil) Honors degree from MNIT Jaipur Rajasthan University in the year 1982 and thereupon joined the Indian Administrative Service in Telangana cadre in 1985. His son Piyush Samaria is also an IAS officer.

Samariya has been secretary and additional secretary in the ministry of labor and employment. Apart from this, he has also been CMD of the Electricity Distribution Company Andhra Pradesh, CMD of Andhra Pradesh Transmission Corporation, and Secretary of the Irrigation Department.