A practitioner note on the composition of the Central Information Commission, the selection process, and the pendency position the Commission inherits.
In December 2025, Shri Raj Kumar Goyal was sworn in as the Chief Information Commissioner by the President of India, Smt. Droupadi Murmu, at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Eight new Information Commissioners took oath at or around the same period.
With these appointments, the Central Information Commission reached its full sanctioned strength of one Chief Information Commissioner and ten Information Commissioners. This is the first time since 2016 that the Commission has operated at full strength.
The post of Chief Information Commissioner had remained vacant from 13 September 2025, the date on which Shri Heeralal Samariya demitted office on completion of his term.
Appointments to the Central Information Commission are governed by Section 12 of the Right to Information Act, 2005. The Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners are appointed by the President on the recommendation of a three-member Committee comprising:
Under the Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019, the term, salary, and other conditions of service of the Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners are no longer fixed by the Act itself. They are prescribed by the Central Government by rules made under the Act. The current rules provide a term of three years for both the Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners. The Chief Information Commissioner is not eligible for reappointment.
The appointee is required to be a person of eminence in public life with wide knowledge and experience in one or more of the following fields: law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism, mass media, or administration and governance. On appointment, the appointee stands retired from any parent service from which they may have come.
As of April 2026, the composition of the Commission is as follows.
A live list with the date of oath, the field of eminence, and the date on which the term expires is maintained on the Updates page of this site. The list is updated as and when a Commissioner is appointed, demits office, or retires.
Section 12(5) of the Act permits a Commission of up to ten Information Commissioners in addition to the Chief Information Commissioner. The Commission functions through benches. The disposal rate of second appeals and complaints depends directly on the number of benches available on any working day.
From 2016 onward, the Commission operated at less than its sanctioned strength. At various points in 2024 and 2025, only three or four Commissioners were in office, with a backlog that at its height exceeded 23,000 second appeals and complaints. The Supreme Court, in orders passed in Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India (2019) 10 SCC 1 and in subsequent proceedings, directed that vacancies be filled in a time-bound manner. In January 2025, the Supreme Court recorded concern about the functioning of the Commission.
The return to full strength allows the Commission to restore benches to the Sections that had been collapsed due to shortage of Commissioners. The first operational effect will be visible in the disposal rate over the next two quarters. The second-order effect, which is the time an applicant waits for a second appeal to reach hearing, will take longer to correct.
On the basis of publicly available figures, the Commission had a pendency of the order of 23,000 second appeals and complaints as of January 2025. The disposal rate had crossed ninety per cent for the financial year 2023-24 on the strength of hybrid hearings. Pendency fell in that year but began to rise again as vacancies went unfilled.
Applicants whose second appeals were filed in 2023 and 2024 should expect hearings to be listed progressively over the next year as the new benches stabilise. A speaking order from the Commission, whether allowing or dismissing the appeal, is the end-point of the second appellate process. Thereafter, the remedy lies in writ jurisdiction before the appropriate High Court.
The constitutional challenge to the Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019 on the ground of institutional independence remains pending. The 2019 amendment altered the tenure, salary, and other conditions of service from those earlier fixed in parity with the Chief Election Commissioner to those to be prescribed by the Central Government by rules.
The question of whether the Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners should be granted a constitutional status, similar to the Chief Election Commissioner, has been raised in academic and policy literature. The question is not currently before Parliament but continues to be raised in submissions to successive Law Commission exercises.
19 April 2026
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