Kashmir
Life: Srinagar: Wednesday, 29 July 2015.
The Passport
Office Srinagar has denied disclosing the total number of applications it has
rejected for want of clearance from police and other agencies.
Human rights
activist and Head Human Rights Division APHC (m), Mannan Bukhari said that he
had filed an application seeking information regarding the “total number of
Passport Applications/ forms of the citizens which have been rejected and consequently were denied
Passports on account of the non-clearance reports by the police and other
investigating agencies and Total number of
such Passport Applications/forms
of desired persons, which are
Still pending for clearance/ further
orders, before Passport Office Srinagar”. “The Chief Public Information
Officer, Passport Office, Srinagar denied the same,” Mannan said, “I have moved
an application to first appellate authority now.”
“The Chief
Public Information Officer, Passport Office, Srinagar through his response
dated 28-05-2015 addressed to the applicant denied information stating that the
said information falls under section 8 sub-section 1 (g) and (j) of the Right
to Information Act,2005 which envisages:
Information,
the disclosure of which would endanger the life or physical safety of any
person or identify the source of information or assistance given in confidence
for law enforcement or security purposes.
Information
which relates to personal information the disclosure of which has no
relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause
unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual …”
After denied
information, Bukhari filed First Appeal before First Appellate Authority in
which he termed the reply of the Chief Public Information Officer, Passport
Office, Srinagar “vague and wrong” and stated: “That the reply/information
sought by the appellant in terms of the application dated 15/05/2015 has been
denied in categorical terms by the PIO concerned by stating the misleading and
distorted reality about Section 8 1 (J) of the RTI Act, as such, the PIO concerned
has miss construed the meaning of the above stated provision of the Act.”
Bukhari said
that the law says: Sec 8: Exemption from
disclosure of Information–(1) Not-withstanding anything contained in this Act,
there shall be no obligation to give any citizen,-
(j)
Information which relates to personal information the disclosure of which has
no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause
unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public
Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate
authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest
justifies the disclosure of such information.
“It is
submitted humbly that from bare perusal of section 8 1 (J) it has been
categorically made clear in view of the said section that the information
sought is purely of Public interest as such the disclosure of the same has
definitely got relationship to the public activity and their interests, as such
no unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual/public shall be caused
in view of the fact that the appellant who sought the information, does not
want it viz-a-viz the privacy of any individual/public,” Bukhari said in his
application. “The fact of the matter is that the passport applications/forms of
the citizens have been either rejected or with-held as consequence of which
they have been denied passports on account of the non-clearance reports by the
police and other investigation agencies.”
“The appellant
didn’t seek the information about any particular person/individual, if this is
the case, then the situation would have been different and it could have been
easily assumed and presumed that the information sought is the unwarranted
invasion on the privacy of any activity of public/individual, but here the case
is different, the applicant sought the information about total number of
passport applications/forms but not about any particular individual or public
activity, hence the information sought in no way can be treated as unwarranted
invasion of the privacy of the individual,” Bukhari’s application reads.
Bukhari said
that the information sought as stated herein above, would not “endanger the
life or physical safety of any person as reflected in Section 8 1 (g) of Act as the information sought is
purely of public interest besides it has no bearing on Law enforcement, the
disclosure of which shall be denied for security purposes”.
“It is humbly
submitted that the PIO concerned has not assigned any reason/s as to how the
information sought endangers the life or physical safety or as to how it is the
source of information or assistance given in confidence for law enforcement or
security purposes. Hence the appellant
has been deprived/denied the information sought without any reasonable cause or
justification. Therefore the same amounts to the violation of the Principals of
Natural Justice (PNJ) which is required to be addressed and redressed by this
Hon’ble forum,” the application further reads.