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President Smt. Pratibha Patil administered the oath of office to the former Telecom Secretary P J Thomas in a ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhawan yesterday. Thomas is the 14th Central Vigilance Commissioner of India. Thomas succeeded Pratyush Sinha, a 1969-batch IAS officer of Bihar cadre, who vacated the office on Monday after four years of tenure as the CVC.

But the whole program was soaked in controversy when main opposition party BJP boycotted the ceremony citing it as overruling of its legitimate worries. BJP quoted Thomas as non eligible candidate for the post and said Thomas carries a 'tainted background' with him.

However, justifying the election of Thomas for the position, PM Mr. Manmohan Singh said that we have elected the best candidate out of the three finalists.

P J Thomas is the IAS officer of Kerala cadre of 1973 batch. He has served important departments such Industry, Finance, Agriculture, Human Resource department, Law & Justice in various capacities.

He became the Kerala Chief Secretary in 2007 and moved to the Central government as Secretary in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs in January, 2009. Later he went on to become the Telecom Secretary.

In the ceremony hald at Rashtrapati Bhawan several people of repute were present including PM Mr. Manmohan Singh, Vice President Mr. Hamid Ansari, Home Minister Mr. P. Chidambaram, Law Minister M. Verappa Moily, Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habiullah and Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrashekhar.

The member of selection committee and leader of opposition in Lok Sabha Smt. Sushma Swaraj said that a person with tainted background should not have been appointed as the chief of a body which is responsible for monitoring of corruption in country.

BJP had also met President on Monday requesting her for not signing the appointment letter of Thomas. Setting herself aside from the majority decision of the three member panel constituted for the selection of CVC Commissioner, Sushma Swaraj has blamed that Thomas has been involved in hiding the details of 2G spectrum scam. Thus, a person of this character can not be accepted as the Commissioner of CVC.