Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha; born 4 October 1958 is an

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

diplomat who belongs to the

Indian Foreign Service The Indian Foreign Service (IFS) is the diplomatic service and a central civil service of the Government of India under the Ministry of External Affairs. The Foreign Secretary is the head of the service. Vinay Mohan Kwatra is the 34th and the ...

. He is the former

High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom The High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom is the head of the High Commission of India to the United Kingdom. The High Commission is located at India House in London. History In 1919, a committee chaired by the Marquess of Crewe det ...

. He was sworn in as Central Information Commissioner on January 1, 2019. In October 2020, he has been selected to be the Chief Information Commissioner of India.

Personal life

Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha hails from

Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West ...

. Born in a Kayastha family of Patna, he was schooled at

Chesham Chesham (, , or ) is a market town and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, south-east of the county town of Aylesbury, north-west of central London, and part of the London commuter belt. It is in the Chess Valley, surrounded by farmla ...

and at the St. Michael's High School, Patna. He holds a B.A. (Honours) degree in

History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

from St. Stephen's College, Delhi and a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Th ...

degree in

from the

University of Delhi Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate university, collegiate Central university (India), central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and ...

. He also has an advanced diploma in Arabic from the American University in Cairo. He is married to Girija Sinha and they have two sons. He is the son of

Lieutenant General Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the ...

Srinivas Kumar Sinha, PVSM, who was former Vice Chief of the Army Staff of the Indian Army, former Governor of Jammu and Kashmir and

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

, and former Ambassador of India to

Nepal Nepal (; ne, :ne:नेपाल, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in S ...

. His sisters are

Manisha Sinha Manisha Sinha is an Indian-born American historian, and the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of '' The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition'' (2016), which won the Frederick Douglass Book Pri ...

, Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut, and Mrinalini Sinha, Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

Career

Sinha is an

officer of the 1981 batch. After retiring from foreign service, he was first appointed as Central Information Commissioner on 1 January 2019 and was subsequently sworn in as the

Chief Information Commissioner of India The Chief Information Commissioner of India is the head of the Central Information Commission appointed by the President of India. The first Chief Information Commissioner was Wajahat Habibullah Wajahat Habibullah (born 30 September 1 ...

on 7 November 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sinha, Yashvardhan Kumar 1958 births People from Patna Indian diplomats Indian Foreign Service officers Living people