Revisit your disclosure policy: CIC to RBI

Tanu Sharma:Indian Express;Tue Nov 16 2010,

New Delhi : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been asked to revisit its policy on disclosure of various reports, including inspection reports, based on which it takes decisions pertaining to the financial health of the various banks in the country, to the public at large under the Right to Information Act. A decision to this effect came from the Central Information Commission on Thursday which asked the country’s apex bank to “revisit” its policy on disclosure of inspection reports.

Satyananda Mishra, the information commissioner deciding an appeal against the RBI, observed, “In the post-RTI Act times when every public action by public authorities is expected to be informed by transparency, to claim complete secrecy in matter of inspection reports of financial institutions and banks and not to share anything with the public is, to say the least, untenable.”

Disapproving the stance taken by the RBI in not furnishing the information sought by one Madhav Balwant Karmarkar, a Pune resident, the Commission ordered the CPIO “to bring this to the notice of the authorities in the RBI for taking appropriate action by revisiting their policy.”