RTI
Requests containing 'why' cannot be answered under Section 2 (f)
Bombay High Court
Dr. Celsa Pinto, Ex-Officio Joint ...
vs
The Goa State Information Commission.
on 3 April, 2008
Equivalent citations:
2008 (110) Bom L R 1238
Author: S Bobde
Bench: S Bobde JUDGMENT S.A. Bobde, J.
The petitioner is a Public
Information Officer appointed as such under the Right to Information Act, 2005.
She has challenged the order dated 27.7.2007 passed by the Goa Information
Commission holding her responsible for furnishing incorrect, incomplete or
misleading information to the respondent No. 2 and also for providing false
information.
The respondent No. 2
had sought the following information from the P.I.O. under the Right to
Information Act, 2005 regarding filling up the post of Curator .
The respondent asked “
Why the post of curator was not filled . The PIO (Petitioner) has stated N.A.
Thereafter, the
second respondent sought clarification as to what the petitioner meant by NA.
It was clarified by the petioner that NA meant ‘Not Available”.
The respondent No. 2
took the matter to the Goa Information Commission. The Goa Information Commission has held the
petitioner guilty of furnishing incomplete, misleading and false information
and has imposed the penalty of Rs. 5,000/-which is liable to be deducted from
the petitioner's salary from the month of August 2007. This order was
challenged in thiscase.
Mr. Lobo, the learned
Counsel for the petitioner submitted that the Goa Information Commission
(hereinafter referred as Commission) has wrongly held that the petitioner
provided incomplete and misleading information on the 3 points requested by the
respondent. It is not possible to comprehend how the Commission has come to
this conclusion.
As regards the
requisition by which the petitioner was called upon to give information as to
why the post of Curator was not filled up by promotion and why the Librarian
from the Engineering College was not considered for promotion, the petitioner
had initially answered by stating that the information was N.A.(Not Available).
Thereafter, she had clarified by stating that it means I don't know.
The Commission has
initially observed in para. No. 13 that it does not see anything wrong in the
petitioner's reply that she does not know the information because P.I.O. cannot
manufacture the information. However, in para. No. 14, the Commission has
observed that the petitioner has not supplied a correct information because she
corrected information on points No. 2 & 3. It can be recalled that the
petitioner corrected the information by explaining that Not Available meant she
does not know. It is not possible to accept the reasoning of the Commission.
There is no substance in the observation that merely because the petitioner
initially said ‘Not Available” and later on corrected her statement and said
she does not know and the petitioner provided incomplete and incorrect
information.
The Court observed
that
“ In the first place, the Commission ought to have noticed that the Act confers
on the citizen the right to information. Information has been defined by Section
2(f) as follows.
Section
2(f) -Information means any material in any form, including records,
documents,memos e-mails, opinions, advices, 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 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.
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.
In the result, the
impugned order is hereby set aside."
**
No comments:
Post a Comment