Former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Rajiv Mathur is among three new central information commissioners appointed through a notification Friday night. The other two are former Syndicate Bank chairman Basant Seth and former Environment Secretary Vijay Sharma.

The appointments come after the delay of several months, though there are still two more vacancies in the Central Information Commission, which has already piled up hundreds of cases under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

Sources in Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which issued the notification, say a balance has been tried to be struck by picking up an IPS, an IAS and one from the banking services to utilise their experience in handling the varied type of RTI applications. They said the remaining two vacancies will also be filled soon.

The posts have been filed through advertisement which attracted hundreds of applications, prominent among them being the BJP's RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal, former Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Mukesh Chandra Joshi, Union Law Secretary D R meena, and Narcotics Control Bureau chief O P S Malik.

Sources indicated that the two remaining vacancies will also be filled from these applicants instead of issuing another advertisement and Joshi is the front-runner as the Commission needs someone with experience of the Income Tax Department.

Headed by former Personnel Secretary Satyananda Mishra, a retired IAS officer, the Commission currently has five other information commissioner: ML Sharma, retired IPS of Rajasthan cadre, Ms Deepak Sandhu, former PIB chief and media adviser to PM, Ms Sushma Singh, retired I&B secretary and retired IAS from Jharkhand cadre, activist Shailesh Gandhi and Ms Annapurna Dixit, ex-officer of United Nations Children's Fund.