Central Information Commission
P M Narayanan vs Life Insurance Corporation Of India on 20 February, 2025
के ीय सूचना आयोग
Central Information Commission
बाबा गंगनाथ माग, मुिनरका
Baba Gangnath Marg, Munirka
नई िद ी, New Delhi - 110067
File No: CIC/LICOI/A/2023/142225
P M Narayanan .....अपीलकता/Appellant
VERSUS
बनाम
CPIO,
Life Insurance Corporation of
India, RTI Department, Central
Office, 'Yogakshema' Jeevan
Bima Marg, Mumbai - 400021 .... ितवादीगण /Respondent
Date of Hearing : 11.02.2025
Date of Decision : 19.02.2025
INFORMATION COMMISSIONER : Vinod Kumar Tiwari
Relevant facts emerging from appeal:
RTI application filed on : 28.07.2023
CPIO replied on : 23.08.2023
First appeal filed on : 31.08.2023
First Appellate Authority's order : 28.09.2023
2nd Appeal/Complaint dated : 11.10.2023
Information sought:
The Appellant filed an RTI application dated 28.07.2023 (online) seeking the following information:
"In query, file no LICOI/A/P/21/00030/000276/Raksha, Are the employees of Life Insurance Corporation of India eligible to voluntarily contribute additional Provident Fund to their Provident Fund Account, in addition to the statutory deduction of 10% of the salary made by the Corporation, on the additional salary paid to them as salary arrears, due Page 1 of 8 to revision in their salary, in the financial year of the payment of salary arrears, reply was, Yes, every member of the Provident Fund is eligible to voluntarily contribute additional amounts to their Provident Fund account within the prescribed limits specified in the Life Insurance of India, Provident Fund No1 Rules. In query, file no LICOI/A/E/22/00029/240, Whether additional salary paid to the employees of LIC Of India in the Financial Year 2021-22, as arrears towards salary revised for previous Financial Years, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 is considered as salary for the Financial Year 2021-
22., the reply was Yes, As per the option exercised by the employee, if no option is exercised in the requisite form no 10E for grant of relief under Section 89 of the Income Tax Act. Now, I request you to inform me the following under the RTI Act, 2005 1)Does Life Insurance Corporation of India Provident Fund No 1 Rules allow Life Insurance Corporation of India to allow her employees to voluntarily contribute additional Provident Fund to their PF account, in addition to the statutory deduction of 10% of the salary made by the Corporation, on the additional salary paid to them as salary arrears, due to the revision in their salary, in the financial year of the payment of the salary arrears, where the employee has exercised his/her option in the requisite form 10E for grant of relief under Section 89 of the Income Tax Act? 2)Has Life Insurance Corporation of India allowed any of her employees to voluntarily contribute additional Provident Fund to their PF account, in addition to the statutory deduction of 10% of the salary made by the Corporation, on the additional salary paid to them as salary arrears, in the Financial Year, 2021-22, due to the revision in their salary, as arrears towards salary revised for previous Financial Years, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21, where the employee has exercised his/her option in the requisite form 10E for grant of relief under Section 89 of the Income Tax Act? 3)Has Life Insurance Corporation of India allowed any of her employees to voluntarily contribute additional Provident Fund to their PF account, in addition to the statutory deduction of 10% of the salary made by the Corporation, on the additional salary paid to them as salary arrears, in the Financial Year, 2021-22, due to the revision in their salary, as arrears towards salary revised for previous Financial Years, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21, where the employee has not exercised his/her option in the requisite form 10E for grant of relief under Section 89 of the Income Tax Act?"
The CPIO furnished a reply to the Appellant on 23.08.2023 stating as under:
Page 2 of 8"The applicant is informed that as per rule 15(a) of Life Insurance Corporation of India provident Fund No 1 Rules which states that "The contribution of each member of the fund shall be at the rate of 10% of his monthly salary as defined in Rule 2 of these Rules.
Rule 15(b) says: Not withstanding what is stated in 15(a) above a member may contribute to the fund more than 10% of his monthly salary but such excess contribution shall not exceed a further sum of 90% of his monthly salary.
As regards to where the employee has exercised/ not exercised his/her option in the requisite form 10E for grant of relief under Section 89 of the Income Tax Act, due to revision in their salary in the FY 2021-22, the applicant is informed that, if any individual receives any portion of his/her salary in arrears, he/she can claim relief in terms of provisions of Section 89 read with Rule 21A. For claiming relief, he/she has to submit Form No 10E, wherein tax is recalculated for each previous year, taking into account portion of salary received as arrears. The rule 21A does not provide deduction against investment made in current year to be spread over past relevant years for calculation of tax relief. Further the applicant is informed that the information sought by the applicant is the same as his earlier application Ref: LICOI/R/E/22/00240 dated 26/03/2022 under which he had even made second appeal Ref:
CIC/LICOI/A/2022/125318 dated 25/05/2022.Compliance for the said second appeal has been submitted on 17/07/2023 as per CIC order and decision dated 28/06/2023 (Copy of the compliance is enclosed for your ready reference).
It is observed that the applicant is seeking similar information through various applications from this Public Authority.
In this regard the attention of the applicant is drawn to the observation of Hon'ble CIC:
File No. CIC/LS/C/2012/000858SA to File No. CIC/LS/C/2012/000872SA- 13 cases Shri Nitesh Kumar Tripathi v/s GNCTD, Delhi : (1) Dte of Health Services and others dated 04072014 ".......Citizen has no Right to Repeat For the above reasons and based on objective of the RTI Act, its provisions, their interpretation by the Information Commissioners referred above, reading them together, this Commission observes:Page 3 of 8
a) The citizen has no right to repeat the same or similar or slightly altered information request under RTI Act, 2005, for which he already got a response.
b) Once an RTI application is answered, the appellants shall refrain themselves from filing another RTI application against the public authority as once information is received and held by them or posted in public domain, because such information is deemed to have ceased to be 'held' by the public authority.
Repetition shall be ground of refusal:
c) Such repetition of information request may be considered as reasonable ground for refusal under the RTI Act.
d) An applicant or appellant repeating the RTI application or appeal either once or multiple times, suppressing the fact of earlier application and receipt of the answer, the CPIO of public authority may reject it forthwith after intimating it along with reasons...""
Being dissatisfied, the appellant filed a First Appeal dated 31.08.2023. The FAA vide its order dated 28.09.2023, upheld the reply of CPIO.
Feeling aggrieved and dissatisfied, appellant approached the Commission with the instant Second Appeal.
A written submission dated 10.02.2025 has been filed by Shri Bichitra Mahapatra, Executive Director (RTI)/FAA is taken on record. Relevant extracts of the same are reproduced below:
"...We humbly submit before the Hon'ble CIC that:
The appellant Shri PM Narayanan in his RTI application dated 23/07/2023 has raised 3 interrogatory queries as below:
Q.No.(1) Does LIC of India PF No.1 Rules allow its employees to contribute in APF.....
Q.No.(2) Has LIC of India allowed...... where employee has exercised.. grant of relief under Section 89 of the Income Tax Act?
Q.No.(3) Has LIC of India allowed under Section 89 of the Income Tax Act? where employee has not exercised ..... grant of relief In response, the relevant rule ie. provision to pay Additional Provident Fund (APF) by LIC employees was provided to him.
In his First Appeal he requested the First Appellate Authority to "direct the CPIO to answer my 3 queries with direct Yes or No answers". The First Appellate Authority while upholding the decision of the CPIO, informed the Appellant that the CPIO can furnish only the information available as a record, already maintained with the office of Public Authority.
Page 4 of 8In his Second Appeal the Appellant has mentioned, "In Life Insurance Corporation of India, the employees Provident Fund collections are administered by their eight zonal offices, spread over India. The second and third questions can be easily answered by asking the 8 zonal offices...." It means the Appellant is fully aware of the fact that the data sought by him is not available with this office of Public Authority. It is humbly submitted that the information sought by the appellant is not maintained in the form of record, as the same is neither required to be maintained for day to day functioning nor does it form part of any regulatory requirement or submission. As per provisions of RTI Act, 2005 Section 7(9), "information shall ordinarily be provided in the form in which it is sought unless it would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority". We reiterate that the information sought by the appellant is not available with this office of Public Authority in a record form and the compilation of the same, would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority as per section 7(9) of RTI Act, 2005.
It is further submitted that LIC of India Provident Fund No:1 Rules are meant for the employees of the Corporation and are available on LICs intranet site (Jeevan Sanchar) for the use of its employees. The appellant is neither an LIC employee nor any larger public interest has been established by him through such queries.
The contention of the appellant that the queries asked in his current application and earlier two RTI applications are different is not valid. The information sought in all the applications is about Additional Provident Fund contribution by LIC employees at instances when salary arrears payments were made.
In all the replies the relevant provisions of PF Rules were provided by the CPIO, concerned. Hence, it is humbly submitted that complete and correct information that is available on record has been already furnished to the appellant. Also the tax implications as regards Section 89 were explained to the appellant in the spirit of RTI Act to which the appellant has labeled as "overload of irrelevant information" in his Second appeal.
We substantiate our stand with the following decisions of the Hon'ble CIC:
Second Appeal No. CIC/LICOI/A/2021/112975 dated 3.10.2022 of Mr. Paresh Trivedi VS LIC India, Kanpur, UP:Page 5 of 8
The Commission, after hearing the submissions of both the parties and after perusal of records. observes that the appellant is aggrieved that information has not been provided to him by the respondent on his RTI application. The Commission observed that the appellant has sought information pertaining to the year 2016 onwards w.r.t the reappointment of employees along with their names, SR number, designation, appointment letter, etc. The Commission is of the view that the information sought by the appellant is voluminous in nature and collating and compiling of which would disproportionately divert the resources of the respondent organization. Hence, the disclosure of information is exempted as per Section 7(9) of the RTI Act. The Commission observed that the information sought by the appellant is wide in nature and the CPIO is not expected to collate or compile the information in the manner as sought by the appellant.
CIC File No. CIC/BS/A/2013/000606/4903 dated 11.04.2014 Mr. Mohan Sharma v/s CPIO & Sr. Superintendent of Post Offices Department of Posts: "Under the provisions of the RTI Act only such information as is available and existing and held by the public authority or is under control of the public authority can be provided. The PIO is not supposed to create information that is not a part of the record. He is also not required to interpret information or furnish replies to hypothetical questions,"
In the light of the above, we humbly request the Hon'ble Information Commissioner to consider the case favorably and to dismiss summarily the second appeal dated 11/10/2023 filed by Shri P M Narayanan."
Relevant Facts emerged during Hearing:
The following were present:-
Appellant: Not present.
Respondent: Ms. Madhavi Tari, Secretary (RTI)/CPIO along with Shri Rajiv kapoor, Secretary (F & AO) present through video-conference.
The Respondent submitted that vide their letter dated 23.08.2023, they have provided complete point-wise reply/information to the Appellant as per the documents available on record. However, now at the stage of the second appeal, they have provided updated information to the Appellant along with relevant annexures vide letter dated 10.02.2025. She apprised the bench that appellant is a habitual RTI litigant who has filed multiple RTI applications seeking similar information. The appellant is neither their employee nor is there any larger public interest espoused by him besides the queries in the RTI Page 6 of 8 application being interrogatory in nature. His identical Second Appeal has been disposed of by the Commission vide case File No. CIC/LICOI/A/2022/125318 wherein direction was given to provide revised reply to the appellant. In compliance with the same, additional information was supplied to the appellant vide letter dated 17.07.2023.
Decision:
The Commission after adverting to the facts and circumstances of the case, hearing the Respondent and perusal of the records, observes that the Appellant in his second appeal is aggrieved that till date complete information has not been provided to him on his RTI application. On the other hand, the Respondent contended that information as per their record has already been provided to the Appellant.
The Respondent, before hearing in the second appeal, has placed on record revised comments along with relevant enclosures in the form of written submission dated 10.02.2025 before the Commission which in view of the Commission is an adequate response to the RTI application.
Further, the said written submissions of the Respondent are being treated as an updated reply to the instant RTI application, which the Respondent already shared with the Appellant.
In this regard, the Commission finds no infirmity in the reply and as a sequel to it further clarifications tendered by the CPIO during hearing as the same was found to be in consonance with the provisions of the RTI Act. No further intervention of the Commission is required in the matter.
The appeal is disposed of accordingly.
Vinod Kumar Tiwari (िवनोद कु मार ितवारी) Information Commissioner (सूच ना आयु ) Authenticated true copy (अिभ मािणत स!ािपत ित) (S. Anantharaman) Dy. Registrar 011- 26181927 Date Page 7 of 8 Copy To:
The FAA Life Insurance Corporation of India, RTI Department, Central Office, 'Yogakshema' Jeevan Bima Marg, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021 Page 8 of 8 Recomendation(s) to PA under section 25(5) of the RTI Act, 2005:-
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