Bar & Bench: Chennai: Wednesday, August 09, 2017.
A writ
petition protesting the removal of contact information of ministers from the
Tamil Nadu government official website (www.tn.gov.in) was taken up for hearing
yesterday by the First Bench of the Madras High Court.
The petition
has been filed by a member of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly from Madurai.
It has been
contended by the petitioner that the information pertaining to official phone
numbers and e-mail addresses of the state’s council of ministers, which was
ordinarily available on the website, was abruptly taken down without reason on
July 22. Considering the spirit of proactive disclosure, which underlies the
citizen’s right to information, as well as its statutory embodiment, the
petitioner has averred that this action is in contravention of the Right to
Information Act, 2005 and is hence illegal.
The said
information, being in the nature of official information, does not fall under
any exemption category. Further, it was argued before the bench of Chief
Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sunder, that as per Section 4 (2) (ix) of
the RTI Act, there lies a statutory duty on the government to publish a
directory of information pertaining to public officials and employees.
The
petitioner has also contended that impugned action adversely affects good
governance as well as tenets such as transparency and accountability, which are
essential to a democracy. On these grounds, it has been prayed that the Court
declares the impugned action illegal and void, and further that the
respondent-state be directed to upload the removed information.
On hearing
initial arguments, the Court raised questions as to what information would have
been envisioned by the usage of the term directory in Section 4 (2) (ix) of the
RTI Act. Further, it has given time to the counsel appearing for the
respondents to obtain instructions regarding the reasons for removal of the
said contact information from the government website.
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