NEW DELHI: K V Chowdary, former chairman of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), and Vijai Sharma, the senior-most information commissioner, are tipped to take over as the central vigilance commissioner and chief information commissioner, respectively. Chowdary and Sharma were finalized as the choices for the two crucial positions after the meeting of the selection committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and comprising Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Jitendra Singh as well as Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjuna Kharge.Once ratified by President Pranab Mukherjee, Chowdary, a 1978 batch Indian Revenue Service officer who is currently serving as advisor to the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team on black money, will be the first non-IAS to head the Central Vigilance Commission.Sources said the selection panel settled on Sharma, a 1974 batch IAS officer who superannuated as environment secretary, as its choice to head the Central Information Commission. He has been serving in the commission as information commissioner since 2012. His appointment will be in keeping with the pattern where the senior-most information commissioner has been appointed the chief.However, the decision comes after a puzzling gap of nine months when Rajiv Mathur, former chief of Intelligence Bureau, retired as the chief information commission. The appointment was being looked forward to because the cases pending with the CIC have now crossed 39,000. The government also has to fill three vacancies of information commissioners.The formal announcement of the two appointments will have to wait until Wednesday when the President returns from his visits to Sweden and Belarus.Sources said 203 applicants, including all seven information commissioners, had applied for the post of chief information commissioner and 553 for the post of information commissioners. Under the RTI Act, the CIC has one chief and 10 information commissioners.In CVC, the term of central vigilance commissioner Pradeep Kumar had ended on September 28 last year, while vigilance commissioner J M Garg completed his tenure on September 7. Rajiv, a 1975 batch IPS officer, is the only vigilance commissioner at present. The posts of another VC and the CVC have been vacant for almost a year. Sources said the government had received about 135 applications for the CVC’s posts.The government has come under severe flak from the opposition for the vacant CIC and CVC posts in the last few months with Congress president Sonia Gandhi even raising the issue in Parliament recently.The appointment of CVC was possible after the apex court earlier this month lifted a five-month-old stay imposed after an NGO approached the court alleging lack of transparency in appointment process. The SC had on December 17 last year asked the government to furnish details of the appointment procedure and not to appoint CVC or VC without its approval.