Central Information Commission
Mr.Ajay Kumar Gulati vs State Bank Of Bikaner And Jaipur on 10 November, 2010
CENTRAL INFORMATION COMMISSION
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F.No.CIC/AT/C/2010/000782
Dated, the 10 November, 2010.
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Complainan : Shri Ajay Kumar Gulati
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Respondent : State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur
s This matter came up for hearing on 28.10.2010 pursuant to Commission's notice dated 23.09.2010. Complainant was present in person, while the respondents were represented by Shri Anil Kumar Singh, Deputy General Manager, Shri Abhay Nath, General Manager, Shri P.N.Pandey, AGM, Shri Rajeev K. Kaushik, Manager (Law) and Shri A.K. Bali, Deputy Manager.
2. Facts of the case are as follows:
3. Complainant filed his RTIapplication dated 22.09.2009 before the CPIO, State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur and received from him a reply dated 21.10.2009. The RTIqueries of the complainant read as follows: "1. Please supply me the name and address of the person / authority to whom a payment of Rs.2500/ was made by the Management of State Bank of Bikane and Jaipur as per the directions dt.07.05.2003 passed by Hon'ble Mr.Justice Vijender Jain of the Hon'ble High Court of Delhi in CWP No.7773/2002 titled Ajay Kumar Gulati Vs. State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur.
2. Please supply me the names of the following officials of State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur: CIC_AT_C_2010_000782_M_45618.doc Page 1 of 8
a) Branch Manager (Amar Colony Br., N. Delhi) ACPIO under RTI Act, 2005.
b) Asst. General Manager (RegionI, Delhi) CPIO, under RTI Act, 2005
c) Deputy General Manager (Delhi Zone) CPIO, under RTI Act, 2005
d) General Manager (Planning and Development) H.O. Jaipur Appellate Authority under RTI Act, 2005.
3. Please supply me the name, designation and full address of the Competent Authority who is authorized to accord "sanction for Prosecution" under section 197 Cr.P.C. for initiation of criminal proceedings u/s 217 & 218 IPC of the following officials:
e) Branch Manager (Amar Colony Br., N. Delhi)
f) Asst. General Manager (RegionI, Delhi)
g) Deputy General Manager (Delhi Zone)
h) General Manager (Planning and Development)"
4. In reply, CPIO stated the following to the complainant: "i) The information sought can not be provided without disproportionately diverting the resources of the public authority; otherwise also imposing of cost by the courts for adjournments etc upon the advocates is a matter between the respective advocates.
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ii) The required information is exempted under RTI Act 8(1)(g) and (j) so cannot be made available.
iii) The information is exempted under Section 2(f) of RTI Act as the information available is not in material form. So could not be conveyed."
5. Dissatisfied with the reply, Appellate Authority was approached by the complainant through a petition, in which he stated that he had "asked for supply of names of CAPIO, CPIO and the Appellate Authority, etc. as per the copy enclosed." No replies were received till date. Complainant requested Appellate Authority to give the information forthwith.
6. Appellate Authority passed an order dated 30.11.2009, in which complainant was informed that the information solicited by him had been previously supplied to him by CPIO (CPIO's communication to the complainant was enclosed as a copy).
7. Complainant approached the Commission through his application dated 26.05.2010 claiming that the names of ACPIO, CPIO and the Appellate Authority were denied to him on the ground that these attracted Sections 8(1)(e) and 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act. He also stated that the names of the sanctioning authorities of these Departments were not supplied to him.
8. He further complained that the Appellate Authority and the CPIO denied to him "without any accountability under one or the other pretext to discourage the applicant from filing the applications under the RTI Act."
9. Upon hearing the parties, through its order dated 16.09.2010, Commission directed that respondents must provide to the complainant replies to all three queries.
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10. During the hearing of the complaint, complainant stated that although respondents had provided to him the requested information, they had chosen to give the names of ACPIOs, CPIOs and Appellate Authorities as well as the sanctioning authorities as these are 'today' and not as these were on the date complainant filed his RTIapplication. He stated that he must be given the information as it was on the date he filed his RTIapplication and not as it is now.
11. I fully endorse the complainant's plea. The information regarding the names, etc. must correspond to the date on which the RTIapplication was made. CPIO is accordingly directed to provide information to the complainant within one week of the receipt of this order.
Complaint proceeding:
12. On the basis of complainant's complaint for having been dismissed with provision of irrelevant and unrelated information by quoting inapplicable Sections of the RTI Act, a notice was issued on 23.09.2010 to the then CPIO, Shri Anil Kumar Singh, Asst. General Manager, State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, New Delhi (now posted as Deputy General Manager, State Bank of Travancore, Mumbai) as to why action should not be taken against him for deliberately obstructing disclosure of information through designedly taking recourse to irrelevant exemptionSections.
13. The reply of the CPIO, Shri Anil Kumar Singh has since been received, viz. communication dated 10.10.2010.
14. The sumtotal of his submission is that the query at Sl.No.1 in complainant's RTIapplication could not be answered as information could not be located in the files and records of the Bank. Therefore, on legal advice complainant was informed that information could not be provided due to it coming within the scope of Section 7(9) of the RTI Act.
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15. As regards the other two queries, CPIO pointed out that it was his conscious view that these queries attracted Sections 8(1)(g) and 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act. Neither in his reply to the complainant earlier, nor in his present reply, CPIO has chosen to explain as to how Section 8(1)(g) or Section 8(1)(j) apply to the requested information.
16. Now, in reply to another showcause notice issued to the Managing Director, Shri Supratik Chatterjee under Section 19(8)(b) of the RTI Act, dated 22.09.2010, the Appellate Authority, Shri Satish Kumar, Deputy General Manager, Zonal Office, New Delhi has defended the decision of the CPIO as well as his own.
17. Appellate Authority has pointed out that the complainant, Shri Ajay Kumar Gulati was a "discharged employees of the Bank", having being discharged in the year 2002 following a departmental proceeding, which found him guilty of acts of gross misconduct. He has filed about 24 RTIapplications before the CPIO, RegionI of the Bank at New Delhi alone. His applications are not related to any public interest or public activity, but were regarding his personal grievances against the Bank and pertain to concluded disciplinary action against him. Complainant has also filed a writ petition against the Bank which is awaiting disposal before the Delhi High Court.
18. On behalf of the CPIO, the Appellate Authority has stated that complainant's first query was found to disproportionately divert the resources of the Bank, if answered, because the information which complainant was seeking through this query could well have been accessed by him either directly or through his Advocate from the case files from the Registry of the Hon'ble High Court of Delhi.
19. This explanation is rather odd. In their anxiety to anyhow deny to the complainant information, respondents seem to be searching for subterfuges such as this one. Under Section 2(j) of the RTI Act, a public CIC_AT_C_2010_000782_M_45618.doc Page 5 of 8 authority / CPIO is expected to divulge to an applicant an information held by it. Here, complainant had asked for a simple information regarding the payment of cost on the orders of the High Court and the name of the person or authority to whom the cost was paid (High Court's directive was dated 07.05.2003 in CWP No.7773/2002).
20. AA and CPIO failed to notice that under Section 2(j) of the RTI Act read with Section 2(f), if an information is held or it is under the control of a public authority, it is subject to disclose under the RTI Act provided it did not attract an exemptionSection. It is not the respondents' case that this item of information was barred from disclosure under any exemption Section. They have cited an unrelated decision of this Commission in Lalith Mohan Roy Vs. the State Bank of India (dated 16.03.2009) to say that the disclosure was unwarranted. They couldn't have been more wrong.
21. Complainant's was a straightforward query meriting a straight forward response. The plea of the Appellate Authority now that giving to the complainant 45 lines of answers would have diverted their resources, is fanciful.
22. In any case, since this query has since been answered by the CPIO after the intervention of the Commission, I do not wish to labour this point further. Suffice it to say that respondents were desperately wrong in blocking the disclosure of this information, while admitting that it was all along in their control.
23. As regards queries at Sl.Nos.2 and 3, CPIO had cited provisions of Sections 8(1)(g) and 8(1)(j) to decline disclosure. Amazing statements have been made in the Appellate Authority's response to the Commission's showcause notice. It has been contended that the disclosure of the information regarding the names of the ACPIOs, CPIOs and Appellate Authorities at a given period in time would somehow have CIC_AT_C_2010_000782_M_45618.doc Page 6 of 8 endangered the life and personal safety or disclosed the source of information thereby attracting Section 8(1)(g).
24. This type of claim is too absurd even to merit a comment. It nevertheless needs to be pointed out that a public authority is required to openly exhibit the names of its officers as well as names of those who were both placed in charge of the RTI Act and entrusted with the responsibility of the ACPIO, CPIO, Appellate Authority, etc. To claim that to disclose these names which were required in any case to be disclosed would somehow jeopardize the safety of the officers concerned can only be attributed to fanciful imagination and not to sound reasoning.
25. Similar is the matter with disclosure of the names of the Branch Managers, Assistant General Managers, Deputy General Managers and General Managers. These are all names which are required to be routinely disclosed. The claim that bringing out into the open, the names of the officers working in a Bank would somehow invade their privacy and attract Section 8(1)(j) is, to say the least, laboured and unsound reasoning.
Decision:
26. I am entirely unconvinced by the arguments putforth about the manner in which this RTIapplication was handled by the CPIO and later by the Appellate Authority. Corrective has been applied by the Commission's order for disclosure of the information which has been given (although complainant says that even now the information provided is not what he had asked for relating to Sl.Nos.2 and 3 of his query) yet an overwhelming feeling is left that the approach of the CPIO was to somehow block disclosing the requested information by citing unrelated exemptionSections. The predisposition towards nondisclosure of the information at any cost to an employee, whose actions seem to have irritated the powers that be, is unmistakable.
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27. I am of the view that the actions of the CPIO amounted to obstructing disclosure of information to the complainant and he deserves to be penalized.
28. By powers vested in me under Section 20(1) read with Section 18, I hereby direct that a penalty of Rs.25,000/ (Rupees twenty five thousand) be imposed on CPIO, Shri Anil Kumar Singh to be recovered from his monthly salarybills in five instalments starting with December, 2010 salary.
29. I also believe that the collusive action of the CPIO and the Appellate Authority have caused detriment to this complainant and he deserves to be compensated under Section 19(8)(b) of the RTI Act. It is accordingly directed that the head of the public authority, viz. Managing Director, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur shall pay to this complainant a compensation of Rs.5000/ (Rupees five thousand) within one week of the receipt of this order. The head of the public authority shall report compliance to the Commission within 1 week of having effected the payment to the complainant.
30. Matter disposed of with these directions.
31. Copy of this direction be sent to the parties.
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