'I Was Kept In Dark': Congress's Adhir Ranjan Writes To President Murmu On Appointment Of New CIC Heeralal Samariya

While former IAS officer Heeralal Samariya was on Monday sworn in as the Chief Information Commissioner by President Droupadi Murmu, Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said that he was “totally kept in the dark” about the selection.

In a letter to the President, the Opposition member in the Prime Minister-headed high-powered selection committee, alleged that the government neither consulted nor informed him about the selection. The post of the CIC 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).

According to a report by Indian Express, Chowdhury in his letter said, "I, despite being a member of the selection committee in my capacity as the leader of the largest Opposition party in Lok Sabha, was totally kept in the dark about the selection of the CIC/ICs, at the meeting that was held at the residence of the PM, November 3, 2023. The fact that within hours of the meeting in which only the PM and the Home Minister were present and the ‘face of the Opposition’, that is, me, as a bona fide member of the selection committee was not present, the names of the selected candidates were announced, notified and also sworn into office, only indicates that the entire selection exercise was predetermined."

Chowdhury further alleged that while the scheduled time of the selection meeting at 6 pm on November 3, 2023, suited the PM and the Home Minister despite their "hectic electioneering schedules", "my plea for rescheduling the meeting, to be held in the morning on the same day — November 3, 2023 – was totally disregarded, and all my sincere efforts to attend the meeting failed,” he said.

Samairya's 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".