President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice President Mohd Hamid Ansari and Minister of State V Narayanasamy (R) with newly sworn-in Chief Information Commissioner Deepak Sandhu (L) during a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
President Pranab Mukherjee today administered oath of office to Deepak Sandhu who became the first woman Chief Information Commissioner of the Central Information Commission.
A former Indian Information Service officer of 1971 batch, Sandhu has served at many key positions like Principal Director General (Media and Communications) Press Information Bureau, Director General DD News, Director General (News) All India Radio before taking over as Information Commissioner in 2009.
She represented the country at international Film Festivals in Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Tokyo, International Conference on Terrorism and Electronic Mass Media at Glendzhik (Russia) and Cyprus besides Heads of News Meetings at Atlanta, USA and Beijing.
Speaking to PTI she said the RTI journey which began in 2005 is just a beginning and she hopes to take it forward by engaging with various stakeholders.
The new CIC said her priority would be to reduce the pendency of cases at the Commission.
The 64-year old officer is joining office for a relatively smaller tenure of nearly three months in which her biggest challenge would over 30,000 pending cases with the Commission.
"We are waiting for new Commissioners which are likely to be appointed soon. It will ease our burden of disposal of cases and also reduce the pendency at the Commission," she said.
Sandhu will succeed Satyananda Mishra who demitted office after five-years of tenure at the Commission yesterday during which he headed the Bench which declared political parties to be under the ambit of the RTI Act.