Abstract
The Central Information Commission was established under the Right to Information Act, 2005 as the apex decision making body to safe guard the citizen’s Fundamental Right to access information held by public authorities[1]. The efficiency of this transparency regime depend critically on the timely, transparent, and independent appointment of the Chief Information Commissioner and other Information Commissioners. This paper examines the statutory scheme governing such appointments under Section 12 and 13 of the RTI Act, describe the gradual decline of institutional independence occasioned by the Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019, and analyses the recurring crisis of vacancies that has periodically reduced the Commission to a fraction of its ratified strength. Recently, the Commission functioned with only two Information Commissioners between September and December 2025, before Raj Kumar Goyal assumed office as Chief Information Commissioner on 15 December 2025.[2] Relying on Supreme Court’s decision, in Namit Sharma v. Union of India and the continuing mandamus proceeding in the Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India, the paper evaluates whether the existing appointment framework satisfies constitutional guarantees of transparency and accountability, and concludes with suggestions for structural reform. In doing so, it situates the appointment controversy within the wider comparative discourse on the independence of transparency watchdogs and information regulators.
Keywords
Right to Information Act, 2005, Chief Information Commissioner, Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of Inida, Transparency.
Introduction
The Right of Information Act, 2005 was enacted to safeguard the constitutional guarantee of Freedom of Speech and Expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India, which the Supreme Court has long held to encompass the right to know.[3] The said statute created a two tier institutional level, first is the Public Information Officers, and second being the Information Commission, headed by Chief Information Commissioner, being the topmost appellate authority. This appellate tier is designed to function as the final adjudicatory forum for citizens whose requests for information have been refused or ignored by public authorities. Section 12 of the Act constitutes the Central Information Commission, comprising the Chief Information Commissioner and not more than ten Information Commissioners, appointed by the President on the recommendation of a committee consisting of the Prime Minister as Chairperson, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and a Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister[4]. The office of CIC is thus kept apart from from bureaucratic control, since the transparency watchdog cannot itself be subordinate to the government whose functioning it is meant to scrutinize.
Despite this process, The history of RTI Act reveals a continuous tension between the statutory ideal of an independent oversight body and the practical reality of the executive discretion in the appointments. The posts of the Commissioners are mostly vacant, appointments are being challenged as opaque and arbitrary, and the recent 2019 amendment to the Act altered the very term of service of Commissioners, which is being criticized for compromising their independence[5]. The current paper attempts to perform analysis of the doctrine in regard to the law pertaining to the appointment of the CIC, places such a doctrine in context of the jurisprudence of the constitutional and statutory laws and analyse the preset crisis which led to the near complete incapacitation of the Commission from mid-2024 to the late 2025. It further seeks to draw out the lessons that this episode holds for the design of appointment mechanisms to transparency bodies more generally. The current research is topical since the chair of the CIC became vacant on 13 September 2025, when Heeralal Samariya retired from his position, and the vacancy lasted for more than three months until Raj Kumar Goyal was appointed as the new chair of the CIC on 15 December 2025, a delay that, once again, invited judicial censure and public scrutiny of the appointment process. [6]
Research Methodology
This paper adopt a doctrinal and analytical methodology, relying primarily on secondary sources of law. The legal framework I derived from the text of the Right to Information Act, 2005, the Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019, and the Right to Information Rules, 2019. Judicial interpretation is drawn from the reported decisions of the Supreme Court of India including Namit Sharma v. Union of India and the continuing proceedings in Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India, as tracked through orders of the Court between 2019 and 2025. Contemporary developments, including appointment timelines, vacancy statistics, and government affidavit filed before the Supreme Court, are sourced from credible reportage by Supreme Court Observer, LiveLaw, The Wire, and other specialised legal and public-policy publications, cross verified against official notifications where available. The paper is descriptive-analytical in character: it first maps the statutory scheme, then evaluates its practical operation against the backdrop of recent events, and finally derives normative suggestions for reform. The analysis is confined primarily to appointments at the Union level, though comparable concerns arising in the State Information Commissions are noted where relevant.
Review of literature
Existing scholarly work on the appointment of Information Commissioners can be broadly grouped into three aspects. The first concerns the constitutional status and composition of the Commission. In Namit Sharma v. Union of India, the Apex Court examined whether Information Commissioners ought to possess judicial experience given their quasi-judicial adjudicatory functions, and initially directed that person with legal or judicial background be preferred.[7] On review the Court cut this requirement, holding that the qualifications prescribed in Sec12(5) of the Act, distinction in public life with wide knowledge and experience in specified fields, were constitutionally valid and that a strict judicial-background requirement could not be read into the statute.[8] This line of jurisprudence underscores and resolved debate whether the present eligibility criteria adequately ensure the independence and competence necessary for the Commission’s quasi-judicial role. Commentators nonetheless continue to debate whether eligibility alone can substitute for the security of tenure and freedom from executive influence that genuine independence requires.
The second concern of literature critiques the Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019, which amended Sections 13, 16, and 27 of the parent Act, Commentators have observed that the amendment removed the fixed five-year tenure and the salary parity that Information Commissioners previously enjoyed with the Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners, substituting executive discretion in their place.[9] The Right to Information Rules, 2019, framed pursuant to this amendment, subsequently fixed the tenure at three years ad reduced remuneration blow previously prevailing levels.[10] Scholars and civil-society commentators have characterized this as an attempt to convert an ostensibly independent statutory authority into a body functionally subordinate to the Central Government, with attendant implications for the federalism given the amendment’s simultaneous extension of the central rule-making power over State Information Commissions. This body of commentary treats the amendment as emblematic of a broader pattern of diluting statutory autonomy through delegated rule-making. [11]
The third concern, most directly relevant to the present inquiry, documents the chronic delay in filling vacancies at the Commission. Investigative and legal reportage, particularly by the Supreme Court Observer and The Wire, has Closely tracked the continuing mandamus proceedings in Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India, in which Supreme Court has, since 2019, repeatedly directed the Union and State Governments to fill vacancies in a time bound and transparent manner.[12] There sources record that despite explicit judicial directions, including a order dated 30 October 2023 in which the then Chief Justice observed that unfilled vacancies render the right to information a “deed letter”, the Commission has continued to operate at a fraction of its sanctioned strength, with as many as eight or nine of eleven posts vacant for extended periods between 2023 and 2025.[13] This body of literature provides the principal empirical foundation for the analysis that follows, and it is supplemented in this paper with the most recent reporting on the appointment of Raj Kumar Goyal in December 2025.
Method: Legal and Institutional Analysis
Statutory Scheme of Appointment
Section 2 of the RTI Act vests the power of appointment in the President, acting on the recommendation of the three-member Selection Committee comprising the Prime Minister (chairperson), the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and a Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister.[14] A similar structure, substituting the Chief Minister, the Leader of Opposition in the State Legislative Assembly, and a State Cabinet Minister, governs appointments to State Legislative Assembly, and a State Cabinet Minister, governs appointments to the State Information Commissions under Section 15. Section 12(5) requires that Commissioners be persons of eminence in public life with wide knowledge and experience in law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism, mass media, or administration and governance. Notably, the Act does not prescribe any advance timeline for initiating the selection process before a vacancy arises, nor dos it advance timeline for initiating the selection process before vacancy arises, nor does it provide for an officiating or acting Chief Information Commissioner during the lapse, a gap that has repeatedly paralysed the Commission’s functioning whenever the chair falls vacant. This structural silence stands in contrast to other constitutional and statutory offices, where an officiating arrangement or a mandated advance timeline ordinarily prevents such interruption.
The 2019 Amendment and the Erosion of tenure Security
Originally, Section 13 fixed the term of the Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners at five years or until the attainment of sixty-five years of age, whichever was earlier, with salaries and allowances equivalent to those of the Chief election Commissioner and Election Commissioners respectively, a deliberate legislative choice intended to signal parity of independence between the RTI regulator and the Election Commission.[15] The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019 substituted this fixed framework with a provision empowering the Central Government to prescribe, by rules, the term of office, salary, allowances, and other conditions of service of Commissioners at both at central and state levels.[16] pursuant to this power, the Right to Information Rules, 2019 fixed the tenure at three years and set remuneration below what sitting Commissioners had previously drawn, while also removing a provision that had earlier reduced the salary of former government servants by the amount of their pensions.[17] Critics have argued that this amendment, introduced without meaningful pre-legislative consultation, undermines the structural independence of the Commission by placing its own service conditions within the unilateral rule-making discretion of the very executive whose actions it is charged with scrutinizing, and additionally raise federalism concerns insofar as it extends central control over appointments to State information Commissions. Read together, these changes mark a departure from the parity-based model of independence that Parliament had originally chosen to insulate the Commission from executive pressure.[18]
Judicial Oversight: Namit Sharma and the Continuing Mandamus
The Supreme Court has intervened on multiple occasions to safeguard the institutional integrity of the Commission. In Namit Sharma v. Union of India, the Court initially read additional qualifications into Section 12 (5), suggesting a preference for the candidates with legal or judicial background given the quasi-judicial character of the Commission’s functions: on review, however, a differently constituted bench held that such rigid requirement could not be judicially imposed and that the statutory criteria, properly applied, and enough.[19] More consequential for the present purposes is the continuing litigation in Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India in which the Supreme Court has, since a landmark order of 16 December 2019, repeatedly directed the Union and State Governments to fill vacancies, the composition of Search Committees, and the particulars of shortlisted candidates, and to ensure that appointments are not made in favour of persons who did not apply pursuant to the official advertisement.[20] Despite these directions, the government had repeatedly failed to comply: a bench led by then Chief Justice on 30 October 2023 expressed dissatisfaction with continuing non-compliance, observing that unfilled vacancies render the RTI Act’s guarantee of information a dead letter, subsequent orders on 26 November 2024 and 7 January 2025 directed the Department of Personnel and Training to furnish state-wise vacancy data, disclose Search Committee membership, and file affidavits with binding timelines for completing the selection process. Yet each order was followed by further slippage, underscoring the limits of judicial monitoring absent executive compliance.[21]
The 2023-2025 Vacancy Crisis and Recent Appointment
The practical consequences of these institutional weaknesses became acute between late 2023 and late 2025. Four Commissioners retired in November 2023, and the resulting vacancies, eventually numbering eight of nine sanctioned posts, including that of the Chief, remained unfilled for an extended period, notwithstanding an advertisement issued as an early as August 2024 and a government assurance to the Supreme Court in January 2025 that the selection process would conclude by April 2025.[22] The assurance was not honored. Heeralal Samariya, the incumbent Chief Information Commissioner, demitted office on 13 September 2025 upon attaining the age of sixty-five, reducing the Commission to functioning with only two Information Commissioners.[23] An advertisement inviting applications for the post of Chief Information Commissioner was floated only on 21 May 2025, with 30 June 2025 as the closing date, yet the chair remained vacant for several further months. [24]Transparency activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri, in a public letter addressed to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition , noted that the resulting backlog of pending appeals and complaints before the Commission had swelled to nearly 30,000, effectively denying citizens timely redress under the Act.[25] The vacancy was eventually filled when Raj Kumar Goyal, a former Law Secretary of India and IIL Roorkee, alumnus, assumed office as Chief Information Commissioner on 15 December 2025, appointed by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. [26]While this appointment restored a functioning Chief as the apex of the Commission, the eight other vacancies documented in contemporaneous reporting illustrate that the structural causes of delay, the absence of any statutory pre-vacancy timeline, the lack of an officiating arrangement, and the opacity that has historically attended Search Committee proceedings, remain substantially unaddressed. Absent legislative correction, similar disruptions are likely to recur each time a sitting Chief Information Commissioner retires or otherwise demits office.
Compounding Erosion: The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023
A further, related development bears on the institutional context in which the CIC now operates. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 amended Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act to remove the public-interest balancing test that previously permitted disclosure of personal information where it served a larger public interest, substituting an near-absolute exemption for personal information from disclosure.[27] Commentators have observed that this amendment, operating together with prolonged vacancies at the Commission, risks insulating public officials from the accountability at precisely at moment when the institution meant to adjudicate such disclosure disputes is least equipped to do so.[28] The appointment crisis at the CIC therefore cannot be viewed in isolation; it interacts with substantive amendments to the disclosure regime itself to compound the overall weakening of the transparency architecture that the RTI Act was designed to establish. A Commission that is short-staffed is correspondingly less able to develop a considered body of precedent on how the narrowed exemption ought to be applied.
Suggestions
First, Parliament should restore a fixed statutory tenure of five years (or until the age of sixty-five, whichever is earlier) for the Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners, together with salary and allowances pegged to those of the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners, thereby reinstating the parity of independence that the 2005 Act originally contemplated and revering the discretionary framework introduced in 2019. Such parity would remove the perception that the terms of service of Commissioners remain subject to unilateral executive revision.
Second the Act should be amended to mandate that the selection process for any vacancy be initiated at least two months before the vacancy is due to arise upon a Commissioner’s retirement, in line with the Supreme Court’s own directive to this effect, so that appointments follow retirements without the gap witnessed in 2023 and again in 2025. [29]
Third, Parliament may consider introducing a statutory provision for an officiating Chief Information Commissioner, drawn from among siting Information Commissioners by seniority, to ensure administrative continuity during any period which the substantive post remain vacant, a safeguard entirely absent from the present Act.
Fourth, in keeping with the Supreme Court’s repeated directions, the composition of Search Committees, the list of applicants, and the criteria applied in shortlisting candidates should be published proactively on the websites of the Department of Personnel and Training and the respective State Governments, rather than disclosed only under compulsion of litigation.
Fifth, a periodic compliance mechanism, whether a standing parliamentary committee report or an annual disclosure to Parliament, should track vacancy levels and appointment timelines across the Central Information Commission and all State Information Commissions, providing an institutional check independent of episodic judicial intervention.
Finally, the amendment to Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act effected through the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 warrants legislative reconsideration to restore a calibrated public interest test, ensuring that the disclosure regime the Commission is tasked with enforcing is not itself hollowed out even as institutional capacity to enforce it is restored.
Conclusion
The Right to Information Act, 2005 rests on the premise that an independent, adequately staffed, and promptly constituted Information Commission is indispensable to translating the citizen’s right to know into practical reality. Two decades of experience demonstrate that the premise has been persistently tested by delay, discretion, and institutional design choices that leave the appointment process vulnerable to executive inertia. The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019 diminished the security of tenure that once anchored the Commission’s independence, while the prolonged vacancies of 2023 to 2025, culminating in a Commission reduced to two members for the over three months before the appointment of Raj Kumar Goyal as Chief Information Commissioner in December 2025, illustrate the practical cost of these design failures in the accumulation of tens of thousands of unsolved appeals. Each such appeal represents a citizen whose statutory right to know remains, for the time being, unfulfilled. The Supreme Court’s continuing intervention in Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India has proved a necessary but insufficient corrective, given the government’s repeated non-compliance with the binding timelines. Restoring fixed tenure and salary parity, mandating advance initiation of the selection process, providing for an officiating Chief Information Commissioner, and institutionalizing proactive disclosure of appointment particulars would collectively reduce dependence on episodic judicial intervention and better secure the structural independence that the Act’s framers originally envisaged. Absent such reform, the right to information risks remaining, in the words of the Supreme Court itself, continuing risk of becoming a dead letter. [30]
Harshita Pandey
IILM University, Greater Noida
[1] The Right to Information Act, No. 22 of 2005, INDIA CODE (2005).
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Kumar_Goyal (last visited July 20, 2026)
[3] State of U.P. v. Raj Narain, (1975) 4 SCC 428 (India) (recognising the right to know as an incident of Article 19(1)(a)).
[4] The Right to Information Act, No. 22 of 2005, § 12, INDIA CODE (2005).
[5] The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, No. 24 of 2019, INDIA CODE (2019).
[6] CIC Vacancy Crisis Paralyses India’s RTI System, THE PROBE (Sept. 25, 2025), https://theprobe.in/public-interest/cic-vacancy-crisis-paralyses-indias-rti-system-10501177.
[7] Namit Sharma v. Union of India, (2013) 1 SCC 745 (India).
[8] Namit Sharma v. Union of India, (2013) 10 SCC 359 (India) (review petition).
[9] The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, No. 24 of 2019, §§ 2-4, INDIA CODE (2019).
[10] Right to Information Rules, 2019, r. 3 (India).
[11] Centre Changed RTI Law and Rules on Salaries, Tenures Without Consulting CIC, THE WIRE (Nov. 29, 2019), https://m.thewire.in/article/government/rti-amendment-cic-consultation
[12] Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India, (2019) 18 SCC 246 (India).
[13] Vacancies in Information Commissions, SUP. CT. OBSERVER (Nov. 17, 2025), https://www.scobserver.in/cases/vacancies-in-information-commissions-anjali-bharadwaj-v-union-of-india/.
[14] The Right to Information Act, No. 22 of 2005, § 12(3), INDIA CODE (2005).
[15] The Right to Information Act, No. 22 of 2005, § 13 (as originally enacted), INDIA CODE (2005).
[16] The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, No. 24 of 2019, § 2, INDIA CODE (2019).
[17] Right to Information Rules, 2019, rr. 3, 12 (India).
[18] Analyzing the RTI (Amendment) Act 2019: Implications for Transparency, JOURNALISM UNIVERSITY (2026), https://journalism.university/development-journalism-for-social-change/analyzing-rti-amendment-act-2019-transparency/
[19] Namit Sharma v. Union of India, (2013) 10 SCC 359, ¶¶ 12-18 (India).
[20] Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India, (2019) 18 SCC 246, ¶ 25 (India).
[21] Vacancies in Information Commissions, SUP. CT. OBSERVER (Nov. 17, 2025), https://www.scobserver.in/cases/vacancies-in-information-commissions-anjali-bharadwaj-v-union-of-india/
[22] After RTI Activist Flags Vacancies In Information Commissions, Supreme Court Seeks Data From Centre & States On CIC/SICs, LIVELAW (Nov. 29, 2024),https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/supreme-court-vacancies-in-central-and-state-information-commissions-data-sought-from-union-and-states-276367
[23] CIC Vacancy Crisis Paralyses India’s RTI System, THE PROBE (Sept. 25, 2025),https://theprobe.in/public-interest/cic-vacancy-crisis-paralyses-indias-rti-system-10501177
[24] Id.
[25] Failure to Fill CIC Vacancies Negates RTI Act’s Purpose: Transparency Activists Write to PM, LoP, THE WIRE (Oct. 24, 2025), https://m.thewire.in/article/rights/failure-to-fill-cic-vacancies-negates-rti-acts-purpose-transparency-activists-write-to-pm-lop
[26] Raj Kumar Goyal, WIKIPEDIA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Kumar_Goyal (last visited July 20, 2026)
[27] The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, No. 22 of 2023, § 44(3), INDIA CODE (2023).
[28] Delays in Appointing Information Commissioners, DRISHTI IAS (Jan. 9, 2025),https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/delays-in-appointing-information-commissioners
[29] Ashish Tripathi, SC for Transparency in Appointment of CIC, DECCAN HERALD, https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/india%2Fsc-transparency-appointment-718656.html
[30] Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India, Order dated Oct. 30, 2023 (Sup. Ct. India) (per Chandrachud, C.J.), as reported in Vacancies in Information Commissions, SUP. CT. OBSERVER,https://www.scobserver.in/cases/vacancies-in-information-commissions-anjali-bharadwaj-v-union-of-india/