Justifications not part of info under RTI: HC
9 Jul 2009, 0550 hrs IST, Gauree Malkarnekar, TNN
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Goa/Justifications-not-part-of-info-under-RTI-HC/articleshow/4755825.cms
PANAJI: An order of the high court of Bombay at Goa, stating that the
definition for information under the Right to Information Act cannot include
answers to the question "why", which would be the same thing as asking the
reason for a justification, has been circulated to Central ministries and
departments.
Bringing relief to public information authorities, the high court of Bombay at
Goa held: "The public information authorities cannot expect to communicate to
citizens the reason why a certain thing was done or not done in the sense of
justification because the citizen makes a requisition about information.
Justifications are matter within the domain of adjudicating authorities and
cannot properly be classified as information."
The judgment was circulated by office memorandum dated June 1, 2009 to all
ministries, departments and state information commissions of the government of
India by the Centre's department of personnel and training. The judgment has
also been circulated in the Rajya Sabha, the Lok Sabha, and offices of the
President and Prime Minister.
The judgment, dated April 3, 2008, came in favour of Goa's director of
education Celsa Pinto, who had challenged an order dated July 27, 2007 passed
by the Goa Information Commission holding her responsible for furnishing
"incorrect, incomplete or misleading information".
Education department's legal officer Avinash Nasnodkar said that the judgment
appears to have brought relief to several government officials across the
country. "Several copies of the judgment were picked up from us by all
government offices in Goa and the judgment has now been circulated all over the
country by the central government. At times officials are harassed using the
RTI act for wrong purposes. They are expected to have an answer to anything and
everything. At least now they will not be challenged or penalised for not
justifying things they have no control over."
The judgment states that section 2 (f) of the RTI Act defines information to
mean "any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails,
opinions, advises, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts,
reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and
information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public
authority under any other law for the time being in force."
The case pertained to information sought by Milan Natekar, a government
servant, seeking to know from the education director, in this case also the
public information officer, "why the librarian from the engineering college was
not considered for promotion for the post of curator in the Central library
when it had fallen vacant due to retirement" of the person holding the
position.
Initially, the director had replied "N.A." to all questions posed by Natekar,
and when the latter sought clarifications, the director replied that the
abbreviation stood for "not available". To the question as to why the post of
librarian was not filled up, the director stated: "I don't know". Natekar then
approached the Goa Information Commission (GIC).
Ruling in the matter, the GIC held that the education director was guilty of
furnishing incomplete, misleading and false information and imposed a penalty
of Rs 5,000 which was "liable to be deducted from her salary from the month of
August 2007".
Nasnodkar and advocate J A Lobo challenged the commission's order in the high
court. Lobo argued that GIC wrongly held that the director provided incomplete
and misleading information.
The court held that, "it is not possible to comprehend how the commission has
come to this conclusion" and that it saw nothing wrong in the director's reply
that she does not know the information because "PIO cannot manufacture the
information".
The court also held that "it is not possible to accept the reasoning of the
commission. There is no substance in the observation that merely because the
director said not available' and later on corrected her statement and said that
she does not know and the petitioner provided incomplete and incorrect
information.
"In this view of the matter, the order of the commission appears to suffer from
a serious error of law apparent on record and results in the miscarriage of
justice," the court held.
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