Live Law: Mumbai: Friday, July 07, 2017.
The Union of
India has approached the Bombay High Court invoking its writ jurisdiction against
an order by the Central Information Commission (CIC), wherein the UoI was directed
to furnish complete annual appraisal reports (APAR) of an employee at the Bhabha
Atomic Research Centre (BARC) for the period of 2008-2014.
He filed an
application under the Right to Information Act before the Central Public Information
Officer seeking the same information, but it was rejected.
Thereafter,
an appeal was ×led before the first appellate authority, which again rejected the
application on November 10, 2014.
Finally, the
second appeal filed before the CIC came to be allowed in an order dated February
26, 2016.
Senior
counsel Rajiv Chavan appeared for the petitioners, UoI. He submitted that the applicant
employee had been furnished with the grading given to him for the relevant years
in respect of which he had sought information.
However, what
has been not given to him and masked (hidden) is the information which the
employee considers to be sensitive and therefore, covered by Section 8(1)(a) of
the RTI Act, Chavan said.
The bench of
Justice RM Savant and Justice SS Jadhav examined Section 8(1)(a) of the said
Act and noted:“It is well settled that the process of appraising an employee’s performance
and communicating the same is with a view to give an opportunity to the employee
to correct himself or improve himself and also to enable him to take recourse against
the adverse remarks which are appearing in his confidential reports. Hence, the
information which has not been furnished to the Respondent No. 1 would be such information
which would only enable the Respondent No. 1 to improve or correct himself.
However, depriving an employee of the appraisal of the Reporting Officer would tantamount
to denying the employee an opportunity to correct or improve himself or to represent
against what has been recorded in his annual confidential reports.”
In support of
his case, respondent employee’s counsel AM Kulkarni placed the decision of the
apex court in Sukhdev Singh vs Union of India and Ors before the bench.
In the said
case, the apex court had held that every entry in an ACR poor, fair, average
good or very good must be
communicated to the employee within a reasonable period.
Therefore,
after going through the masked (hidden) portion of the APAR, the court observed:
“We do not find anything in the report of the Reporting Officer to be sensitive
or which could prejudicially affect the scientific or economic interest of the
State, so as to be covered by Section 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act. The order passed
by the Central Information Commissioner therefore, does not merit any
interference. For the reasons aforestated, we do not find any merit in the
above petition.”
Thus, the
petition was dismissed.