The anti-corruption watchdog posts have been vacant for the last nine months. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com reports.
The Narendra Modi government has acted at last to select the Chief Information Commissioner and Central Vigilance Commissioner.
It is believed that K V Chowdhary, former chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes, is likely to be appointed the next Central Vigilance Commissioner.
Vijai Sharma, the current senior-most Information Commissioner, will most likely be the next CIC, provided President Pranab Mukherjee approves both names.
The anti-corruption watchdog posts have been vacant for the last nine months.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of the Congress Party in the Lok Sabha, met twice to agree on the names.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was part of the meeting that selected the CIC while Home Minister Rajnath Singh attended the meeting that finalised the CVC's name.
Both panels have sent their recommendations to the President's office.
'The meeting was confidential,' Kharge said after the meeting when asked about the details of the agreement between both sides. Both selection panels are headed by the prime minister.
The delay in the CIC's appointment, after Rajiv Mathur's retirement, drew criticism from several Right To Information activists as well as Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
According to news reports, there were 203 applicants for the CIC's job.
Chowdhary, a 1978 batch Indian Revenue Service officer, is an expert on all matters related to tax and financial investigations.
Before becoming head of the CBDT, he served as the Director General of IT (Investigations) in New Delhi handling high profile investigations. At CBDT he acquired through knowledge of the investigations into the 2G spectrum allocation case and the HSBC Geneva taxpayers list (the Black money issue).
Sharma is a 1974 batch IAS officer from the Uttar Pradesh cadre. He was a member (expert) of the National Green Tribunal in Delhi and is an authority on environmental matters. He started his career in districts like Jhansi, Meerut and Moradabad in UP.
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