Condemning the Office of the Public Information Officer for their mechanical reply under the guise of “invasion of privacy,” yesterday, Justice S. Vaidyanathan of the Madras High Court felt that such official be shown door. The Court was hearing a Petition filed by none other than the TNPSC against the State Information Commission over latter’s Order to disclose the information sought by the RTI Applicant.
The Petitioner pointed out an immunity clause to not to disclose information under Section 8[1][d] of the Right to Information Act, 2005. Whereas, the Court felt that the Official was taking undue advantage of the provision and did not apply its mind, but, simply denied the application made under the Act. Referring to SC’s various Judgments and also citing in one of the cases, the Supreme Court itself held that even the Office of the Chief Justice of the Apex Court comes within the purview of RTI Act.
What was the Application in RTI all about?
A retired Deputy Collector, P. Muthian from Trichy had in 2008 solicited information pertaining to total number of vacancies were filled in for the years; 2006, 2007 and 2008 and among them how many vacancies were reserved for sub classes amongst the Backward Community?
The RTI Application with such queries raised before the Office of the Public Information Officer of TNPSC and the Application was rejected on the grounds of Section 8[1][d] of the RTI Act, 2005.
A bare reading of Section 8[1][d] of RTI Act, 2005 says;
“information including commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of a third party, unless the competent authority is satisfied that larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information;”
From the above provision, even a person with an average intelligence could form opinion, how did the queries posed by the Applicant be rejected under the provision? Was the sought answer ranging from trade secret or intellectual property or it would harm the competitive position of a third party? The Court was right in its assessment that the Officials made it a habit of taking and rejecting RTI Applications mechanically without application of mind.
Even after seven decades of our freedom we are still living under a colonial culture, wherein the officials who are in public domain as servants concealing even a rudimentary information from us under the shield of Confidentiality and Classified Documents, however, literally such information and documents are far from the perception of such classification. Civil society must work towards liberating these servants in public domain from such culture by bringing legal awareness on each and every issues that binds us with them.