Ranchi, March 2: Law secretary and legal adviser to the Jharkhand government, R.B. Gupta, is set to become the state?s first chief information commissioner.

Sources said Gupta, an IAS officer, is resigning from his present post to take up his new assignment. Jharkhand will become the second state after Gujarat to create the post, laid down in the Right to Information Act.

Chief minister Arjun Munda heads the three-member panel that has to recommend the names of the chief information commissioner and state information commissioners to the governor.

Munda said he had held two rounds of meetings with the other members ? finance minister Raghubar Das and leader of the Opposition Sudhir Mahto.

The chief minister used the lunch recess in the Assembly to get the recommendation initialled by Das and Mahto to be forwarded to Governor Syed Sibte Razi.

The chief information commissioner will get a salary and allowances equivalent to that of election commissioner while the information commissioner will hold the rank of chief secretary.

The names of Prafulla Mahanta, principal of Patamada College, Jamshedpur, Shristidhar Mahto of Seraikela, Harish Chandra Patar Munda and Gangotri Kujur have been recommended by the panel for appointment as state information commissioners.

Those campaigning for the Right to Information criticised the decision to pick a bureaucrat as chief information commissioner. ?The officers have grown up with the mindset to hide rather than be open with regard to the functioning of the government,? said Venkatesh Nayak project coordinator of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

Under the Right to Information Act, people of eminence in public life with wide knowledge and experience in law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism, mass media or administration can be appointed as chief information commissioner.

Nayak said there were enough non-bureaucrats who fit the bill. Gujarat too has appointed a former IAS official T.K. Das to the post.