India, July 27 -- India lost an erudite climate negotiator and Right to Information (RTI) campaigner in Vijai Sharma, former union environment secretary, who after retirement from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) became an information commissioner. The career bureaucrat died in California, United States, on July 18, at an age of 74.

A 1974 batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, he was not keeping well after the death of his wife, Ritu Sharma, also a retired IAS officer, in October 2024. According to his family, he had gone to California to visit his son, Dhruv Sharma, where he suffered a stroke and died. He was cremated in California.

Sharma, a LLM from Harvard University, held several important positions in the Centre and...