Central Information Commission
Ankur Saha vs Department Of Financial Services on 19 March, 2025
के ीय सूचना आयोग
Central Information Commission
बाबा गं गनाथ माग,मुिनरका
Baba Gangnath Marg, Munirka
नई िद ी, New Delhi - 110067
ि तीय अपील सं ा / Second Appeal No. CIC/DOFSR/A/2023/614227
Ankur Saha ... अपीलकता/Appellant
VERSUS
बनाम
CPIO: Department of
Financial Services,
New Delhi ... ितवादीगण/Respondent
Relevant dates emerging from the appeal:
RTI : 24.09.2022 FA : 25.12.2022 SA : 18.03.2023
CPIO : 29.09.2022 FAO : 15.02.2023 Hearing : 04.12.2024
Date of Decision: 18.03.2025
CORAM:
Hon'ble Commissioner
_ANANDI RAMALINGAM
ORDER
1. The Appellant filed an RTI application dated 24.09.2022 seeking information on the following points:
(i) "Please furnish details of restrictions if any regarding acceptance of gifts as per code of conduct for officer employees in various PSU Banks. Also furnish details of all such permissions or deviations or approvals which would allow a single or a group of officers to accept gifts of any such value above the restricted limit.Page 1 of 12
(ii) Does these restrictions apply even to Institutions like Insurance and Mutual Fund Companies of which Banks act as agents and sell their products through the Banking Channel.
(iii) Please furnish the value and details of gifts being presented against the names and designations of all such officers across all banks, bank Wise, who had received gifts of value more than the prescribed limit as per the respective Bank's rule book.
(iv) Please furnish PSU Bank wise data, the total cumulative value of such gifts distributed by all such private Insurance Companies versus all such PSU Insurance Companies who have tie ups with respect to the particular Bank and the total cumulative amount of commission earned by the Banks from sale of such third party insurance and mutual fund products. Including PSU Bank owned subsidiaries like SBI Life, SBI Mutual Funds, India First, Canara HSBC Life, India First etc.
(v) Please furnish data Bank Wise total cumulative amount as to Business provided to Private Insurance Companies versus business provided to PSU Insurance Companies..." etc.
2. The CPIO replied vide letter dated 29.09.2022 and the same is reproduced as under:
"Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Bank of Maharashtra, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India, Indian Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Punjab & Sind Bank, Punjab National Bank, Reserve Bank of India, SBI Corporate Centre, Union Bank of India, UCO Bank. vide registration number :- BKOBD/R/X/22/00166, BKOIN/R/X/22/00131, BOMAH/R/X/22/00112, CANBK/R/X/22/00155, CBIND/R/X/22/00149, IBANK/R/X/22/00146, IOVBK/R/X/22/00107, PASBK/R/X/22/00104, PNBNK/R/X/22/00225, RBIND/R/X/22/00115, SBIND/R/X/22/00288, UBIND/R/X/22/00143, UCOBK/R/X/22/00127 respectively."Page 2 of 12
3. Dissatisfied with the response received from the CPIO, the Appellant filed a First Appeal dated 25.12.2022. The FAA vide order dated 15.02.2023 upheld the reply given by the CPIO.
4. Aggrieved with the FAA's order, the Appellant approached the Commission with the instant Second Appeal dated 18.03.2023
5. The Appellant was present during the hearing through video conference and on behalf of the Respondent, Jaseem Siddiqui, AGM & Kunal, Manager, Law, PNB; Vijay Shankar Tiwari, US & CPIO, DFS; Jay Saxena, US & CPIO, DFS; Ratnakar Jha, US & CPIO, DFS; Rachna, Law Officer, Bank of India; Neha Gupta, Law Officer & Manish Kumar Verma, CPIO; Manish Jha, CPIO, Punjab & Sind Bank; Madan Kishore, Chief Manager & Kamal Prasant, Senior Manager, Central Bank of India; Rahul Priyadrashi, Chief Manager (Legal & Rep. of CPIO, Bank of Baroda; Sreeja Rani, CPIO, Indian Bank; Mahalakshmi, CPIO, Indian Overseas Bank; Mridula G., CPIO, Canara Bank attended the hearing in person/through video conference.
6. The Appellant was informed at the outset that the instant appeal is not maintainable as a preliminary perusal reveals that the same has been filed with respect to two RTI Application(s) simultaneously and the relief being sought for is not even coherent and specific or amenable to the jurisdiction of the Commission under the RTI Act. The contents of the second appeal that were referred to are reproduced as under:
"The Banks in India are supposed to be dealing with public money and thus must maintain a very high standard of integrity and compliance in order to keep up the trust of general and the poorest of the poor public of this Nation.
With measures like Jan Dhan Yojna and extensive and intense effort of the Govt of India towards Financial Inclusion it has been possible to extend banking services to the poorest of poor and thus give them an opportunity to better manage their finance and also contribute towards the economy of this Nation. The Govt in an effort to erase middlemen and corruption has also started using these Bank accounts to transfer benefits directly to the beneficiary account Page 3 of 12 But lately since the Banks have been allowed to indulge in the so called Third Party Business, specially the PSU Banks have been indulging into various malpractices to Miss Sell and Force Sell these third party products to achieve targets which would in turn fetch personal benefits to the officers and staff members in form of expensive gifts and incentives from the Third Party (Insurance, Mutual Fund etc etc). Bank officers are also allegedly threatened or preferred for promotions and transfers on the basis of sale of third party products which sometimes compel the officers to indulge in force or miss selling. Reference Second Appeal No CIC/BKOBD/A/2022/144750 dated 21 Sep 2022.
It may be noted that both the Insurance companies and also the Officers of the Banks have been prohibited from indulging in the practice of giving or receiving incentives in exchange of sales of such third party products but it is a well kept OPEN secret that these are being practiced at the cost of customer dissatisfaction and grievances Two RTI dated 24 Sep 2022 with application Nos DOFSR/R/E/22/01143 and DOFSR/R/E/22/01145 were filed and eventually both the RTIs were forwarded to various PSU banks. Most or all of the replies were unsatisfactory and gives a sense of fact distortion. I will try to attach as many replies possible from the Banks but due to file size limitation of 5 MB all such replies might not be possible. Last reply received was dated 15th of Feb 2023 with Ref No: F.No.G14016/07/2023-Ins-11/RTI Govt of India, Ministry of Finance, Department of Financial Services. I seek immediate attention of the commission in this regards for the sake of justice and safeguard of hard earned money of majorly poor customers of the PSU Banks."
Further, submissions received from the Appellant prior to the hearing was also referred to stating inter alia as under:
"Please take note of the attached RTI Reply and RTI First Appeal Reply from various Banks and pictures of Gifts and Foreign Tours (taken from FaceBook posts thus dates could not be determined) organized by India First Life Insurance Company which is a clear violation of: The Gazette of India Extraordinary Part III - Sec 4, No 286, New Page 4 of 12 Delhi, Wednesday, August 26, 2015/BHADRA 4, 1937 (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India Notification Hyderabad, 20th August 2015, F.No. IRDAI/Reg/12/102/2015) xxx The RTI Reply denies any record of such gifts and foreign tours but as per rules all PSU Bank Officers are supposed to take prior approvals/permission for foreign travels. Which thus means either the concerned banks are deliberately hiding the Information or the officers have violated their service rules. This is not about just one PSU Bank nor about one such Insurance company but these violations are being carried out by every such insurance companies and Mutual Fund Companies which have corporate tie ups with a public sector bank.
Bank officers with conflicting interests and armed with the in depth knowledge of their customers financial status, obligations and requirement are well positioned to actually compel (not convince) their customers to buy insurance or mutual fund products for their (bank officers) own personal benefit in form of achievement of targets, gifts, dinners, promotions, postings and even foreign tours.
The Department of Finance being on top of all financial institutions of the country and having jurisdiction on all RBI, Banks, IRDA, Insurance Companies, SEBI and Mutual Fund Companies would be the appropriate department to initiate and head an in depth inquiry into such matters and if so required cancel licence of any or every such private insurance companies who have violated or twisted the rules as laid down.
With such powers and conflicting interests the Bank officials (even MD & CEO or Chief GM or ED of Banks being on the Board of the Insurance or Mutual Fund Companies) are well positioned to act in favour of those or only those customers who would help them fulfil targets by buying Insurance or MF products. The scenario is such that, while the Govt of India, Niti Ayog and Ministry of Finance along with RBI and NABARD comes up with various such welfare schemes like loans and subsidised loans for Farmers, Students, Housing, MSME etc etc to boost the economy and the Bank Page 5 of 12 officials extending these benefits only to those customers who agree to buy such third party products.
Some of the Banks like Indian Bank, Punjab and Sindh Bank, SBI, UCO Bank have shared some data in response to the RTI DOFSR/R/E/22/01143 and DOFSR/R/E/22/01145 which clearly demonstrates the huge differential treatment while promoting third party products from private players and the PSU sectors. Also dismal performance of PSU Banks when it comes to lending to the Poorest of the Poor of this nation, while most of the banks have denied access to these vital information which could have otherwise been used to determine the dark truth if any and thus help the DoFS to take corrective action in that regard."
Please take reference of the figures below disclosed by SBI in reply to the RTI:
Xxx Just 47 beneficiaries across the entire length and breadth of this huge nation of ours who were sanctioned loans below 1 Lakhs and only 486 beneficiaries for loans sanctioned below three lakhs during the period of one whole year !! This is very very very sad that even the largest Bank of this Nation failed to serve the poorest of the poor of this nation.
These figures hint towards the fact that the loans unofficially get sanctioned in exchange of purchase of third party products and less the amount of sanction the less is the possibility of the customers buying an expensive private third party product. And this is an easy way for private insurers to force sell of their most profitable and least popular and least customer friendly products. And thus we see more business being sourced to private Third party Insurance Companies than the amount of Business sourced to the PSU Insurance sectors. Its only a matter of imagination that if officers at Branch levels are awarded with foreign tours under the disguise of conference or any other name, what exactly could be in store for the top management of the PSU Banks and eventually at the expense of innocent general public of this nation of ours.Page 6 of 12
It is quite disheartening that while the Govt of India under the present leadership of the honorable Prime Minister and the Finance Minister have been relentlessly working towards the upliftment of the poor and the backward class and actually working towards "Sabka Saath Saab ka Bikaas" the PSU Banks probably under the influence of a mindset which promotes nepotism, privilege and dirty politics by unelected (left leaning) trade union/association leaders have been effectively blocking the efforts of the Govt of India.
Thus I request you to please consider and treat this appeal of mine in public interest and take appropriate and necessary action."
In this backdrop and considering the fact that the queries raised in the RTI Application (that has been considered in the notice of hearing) do not even conform to Section 2(f) of the RTI Act and seek all pervasive speculative data based on assumptions and conjecture, the scope for any discussion in the matter was found to be of no conclusion. This observation was meant to advise the Appellant about the scope and ambit of the RTI Act and not as a matter of discussion on merits of the case.
While interjecting the Appellant merely argued that he is a layman and is not aware of these technicalities, at which point, the Commission also drew his attention to the fact that his lack of judiciousness in pursuing his matter under the RTI Act has only caused wastage of the public exchequer in having engaged umpteen number of bank officials to attend to the instant hearing.
The Commission also reprimanded the Respondent(s) from DFS for not having applied their mind while processing the instant RTI Application in as much as the Appellant made it abundantly clear that he is seeking the information from DFS. Hence, the DFS ought to have only informed availability/unavailability of the information, i.e if such information was decipherable and existing at the end of DFS instead of mindlessly transferring the RTI Application to all of these banks and even further in having served the notice of hearing issued by the Commission restricted to DFS to all these banks.Page 7 of 12
7. The Respondent(s) present from DFS and all the banks also relied on their written submissions and statements, respectively, filed prior to the hearing, details of which are not warranted to be taken on record.
8. The Commission in furtherance of the hearing proceedings observes that the instant appeal is not maintainable under Section 19(3) of the RTI Act as the Appellant is not complying to the fact that he needs to file separate second appeal(s) for separate RTI Application(s). Moreover, even if liberal interpretation were accorded to the second appeal and the RTI Application referred to in the notice of hearing was to be considered, the fact remains that no relief has been sought by the Appellant which is amenable to the mandate of the RTI Act.
Further, for the sake of propriety and as advice for the Appellant to enable him to exercise his right to information in a more informed manner in the future, it may be noted that the information sought for in the RTI Application is largely unspecific, cumbersome and humungous in nature, thus barely conforming to Section 2(f) of the RTI Act.
In the facts of the instant case, the attention of the Appellant is drawn towards a judgment of Apex Court in the matter of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) & Anr. v. Aditya Bandhopadhyay and others [(2011) 8 SCC 497] stating that:
'37. The right to information is a cherished right. Information and right to information are intended to be formidable tools in the hands of responsible citizens to fight corruption and to bring in transparency and accountability. The provisions of RTI Act should be enforced strictly and all efforts should be made to bring to light the necessary information under clause (b) of section 4(1) of the Act which relates to securing transparency and accountability in the working of public authorities and in discouraging corruption. But in regard to other information, (that is information other than those enumerated in section 4(1)(b) and (c) of the Act), equal importance and emphasis are given to other public interests (like confidentiality of sensitive information, fidelity and fiduciary relationships, efficient operation of governments, etc.).Page 8 of 12
Indiscriminate and impractical demands or directions under RTI Act for disclosure of all and sundry information (unrelated to transparency and accountability in the functioning of public authorities and eradication of corruption) would be counter-productive as it will adversely affect the efficiency of the administration and result in the executive getting bogged down with the non- productive work of collecting and furnishing information. The Act should not be allowed to be misused or abused, to become a tool to obstruct the national development and integration, or to destroy the peace, tranquility, and harmony among its citizens. Nor should it be converted into a tool of oppression or intimidation of honest officials striving to do their duty. The nation does not want a scenario where 75% of the staff of public authorities spends 75% of their time in collecting and furnishing information to applicants instead of discharging their regular duties. The threat of penalties under the RTI Act and the pressure of the authorities under the RTI Act should not lead to employees of a public authorities prioritizing 'information furnishing', at the cost of their normal and regular duties.'
9. Similarly, for better understanding of the mandate of the RTI Act, the Appellant shall note that outstretching the interpretation of Section 2(f) of the RTI Act to include deductions and inferences to be drawn by the CPIO is unwarranted as it casts immense pressure on the CPIOs to ensure that they provide the correct deduction/inference to avoid being subject to penal provisions under the RTI Act. For the sake of clarity, the provision of Section 2(f) of the RTI Act is reproduced hereunder:
"2. Definitions.--In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires,--
(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;.."Page 9 of 12
In this regard, the Appellant's attention is again drawn towards the following observation of the Apex Court in the matter of CBSE vs. Aditya Bandopadhyay & Ors. (supra) wherein it was held as under:
"35. At this juncture, it is necessary to clear some misconceptions about the RTI Act. The RTI Act provides access to all information that is available and existing.........A public authority is also not required to furnish information which require drawing of inferences and/or making of assumptions. It is also not required to provide `advice' or `opinion' to an applicant, nor required to obtain and furnish any `opinion' or `advice' to an applicant. The reference to `opinion' or `advice' in the definition of `information' in section 2(f) of the Act, only refers to such material available in the records of the public authority. Many public authorities have, as a public relation exercise, provide advice, guidance and opinion to the citizens. But that is purely voluntary and should not be confused with any obligation under the RTI Act."
(Emphasis Supplied) Similarly, in the matter of Khanapuram Gandaiah vs Administrative Officer &Ors. [SLP (CIVIL) NO.34868 OF 2009], the Hon'ble Supreme Court held as under:
"7....Public Information Officer is not supposed to have any material which is not before him; or any information he could have obtained under law. Under Section 6 of the RTI Act, an applicant is entitled to get only such information which can be accessed by the "public authority" under any other law for the time being in force. The answers sought by the petitioner in the application could not have been with the public authority nor could he have had access to this information and Respondent No. 4 was not obliged to give any reasons as to why he had taken such a decision in the matter which was before him...." (Emphasis Supplied) And, in the matter of Dr. Celsa Pinto, Ex-Officio Joint Secretary, (School Education) vs. The Goa State Information Commission [2008 (110) Bom L R 1238], the Hon'ble Bombay High Court held as under:Page 10 of 12
"..... 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."
10. Having observed as above, the Appeal is dismissed.
Copy of the decision be provided free of cost to the parties.
Sd/-
(Anandi Ramalingam) (आनंदी रामिलंगम) Information Commissioner (सूचना आयु ) िदनांक/Date: 18.03.2025 Authenticated true copy Sharad Kumar (शरद कुमार) Dy. Registrar (उप पंजीयक) 011-26180514 Page 11 of 12 Addresses of the parties:
1. The CPIO M/o. Finance, Department of Financial Services, Us & CPIO (Ins-Ii), Jeevan Deep Building, 2nd Floor, 10, Parliament Street, New Delhi-110001
2. The CPIO M/o Finance, Department Of Financial Services, CPIO, RTI Cell, Jeevan Deep Building, 10, Parliament Street, New Delhi-110001
3. Ankur Saha Page 12 of 12 Recomendation(s) to PA under section 25(5) of the RTI Act, 2005:-
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