It is immaterial as to how the queries are farmed or whether they are prefaced with "Why", "When", "How", "What", etc.
What is important is that whether the applicant is seeking "information" (Sec 2(f)), "record" (Sec 2(i)) or exercising his "Right to Information" (Sec 2(j)). RTI applicants cannot be expected to be professors of English at Oxbridge ! http://cic.gov.in/CIC-Orders/AT-07012010-01.pdf 9. It is true that no application or a specific request for information can be rejected merely on the ground that appellant has chosen to use expressions such as why, how, whether etc. But it is equally true, that with or without the use of those expressions, if the request for information falls beyond the scope of section 2(f) the request has to be rejected for the simple reason that no information which does not qualify the definition-test of section 2(f) can be sought or disclosed under the RTI-Act. This position has already been confirmed by the decision of the High Court of Bombay & Goa (Writ Petition No. 419 of 2007; dated 03.04. 2008) which stated as follows: “….the Act confers on the citizen the right to information. Information has been defined by Section 2(f)……… The definition cannot include within its fold answers to the question “why” which would be the same thing as asking the reason for a justification for a particular thing. The Public Information Authorities cannot expect to communicate to the citizen the reason why a certain thing was done or not done in the sense of a 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.” 10. It is, therefore, obvious that in the present case what the Appellate Authority meant by quoting the Commission's decision regarding the scope of section 2(f) in the context of the appellant’s queries, was that some of these queries could not be related to the definition of information in section 2(f). I do not find any infirmity in Appellate Authority’s decision. RTIwanted On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 2:44 AM, jayaprakash dabral <jp_dab...@rediffmai l.com> wrote: I have received a reply from PIO, District Collectorate, Tehri Garhwal stating that in Writ petition No. 419 of 2007 "Dr. S Pinto Vs Goa State" in Goa based bench of Mumbai high Court vide its order dated 3.4.2008 it is stated that the PIO are not liable to give any reply to questions which have the word "why" in them? Can anyone give me some comments on this. Regards JP Dabral .
