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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Supreme Court appeals to Supreme Court over RTI by J Venkatesan

Supreme Court appeals to Supreme Court over RTI by J Venkatesan

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published Published on Mar 8, 2010   modified Modified on Mar 8, 2010


The Secretary-General of the Supreme Court has challenged the Delhi High Court judgment that the office of the Chief Justice of India is a “public authority” that comes within the ambit of the Right to Information Act and is bound to provide information about declaration of asset details by Supreme Court judges.

The appeal, filed on Monday by advocate Devadatt Kamat, said the impugned judgment “has far-reaching consequences for the institutional independence of the Supreme Court, the higher judiciary, the position of the office of the Chief Justice of India and the Chief Justices of the High Courts, the position of judges individually and the judiciary as an institution under the Constitution. The High Court has not correctly appreciated the scope and ambit of the Act and the position of the CJI in the Constitutional scheme”.

On September 2, 2009, a single judge dismissed an appeal by the Chief Public Information Officer against an order of the Central Information Commission asking the Supreme Court Registry to furnish to RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal information in CJI's possession on judges' assets. On January 12, 2010, a Full Bench dismissed the Secretary-General's appeal and upheld the single judge's order.

Assailing the judgment, the appeal said: “The Full Bench has come to the conclusion that questioning the binding nature of the 1997 Resolution on declaration of assets by judges is contrary to the assertion of judicial independence and therefore full disclosure is a Constitutional imperative. This approach is not only wrong but self-contradictory. There cannot be an implied constitutional imperative unless there is a constitutional requirement.”

“The right to information under the RTI Act is applicable only to information which is in the public domain. The Act can be invoked only in relation to information pertaining to the public affairs of a public authority. If a matter or information is not in the public domain, there is no right under Section 2(j) of the Act,” it said.

The appeal raised important questions whether the CJI “holds information pertaining to assets of individual judges in a fiduciary capacity” attracting exception under Section (8) (1) (e) of the RTI Act; whether the information on the assets is personal information of the judges exempted under Section (8) (1) (j); whether the respondent has a right to seek information under the Act which militates against the basic constitutional feature and whether certain confidential information in the CJI's possession could be disclosed. The High Court's conclusions were erroneous as information under Section (2) (j) was not an unfettered Constitutional right but was subject to the restrictions under the Act itself, which contains exclusions and also exemptions under Section 8. The High Court erred in concluding that the respondent had a right to information pertaining to the assets of judges under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution, it said.


The Hindu, 9 March, 2010, http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/09/stories/2010030959500100.htm
 

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