Indian
Express: New Delhi: Saturday, 18 April 2015.
Observing
that giving details of individual medical bills of Supreme Court judges under
RTI would “amount to invasion of their privacy”, the Delhi High Court on Friday
dismissed a plea seeking details of medical reimbursements of Supreme Court
judges under the RTI Act.
A bench of
Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Deepa Sharma in its judgment on a plea by
RTI activist Subhash Chandra Aggarwal has held that there was no larger public
interest involved in seeking details of medical facilities availed by
individual judges and “no direction whatsoever” could be issued under the Right
to Information Act.
The RTI
activist, in its plea through advocate Prashant Bhushan had approached the
division bench in appeal against a decision of a single judge of the high
court, which had overturned a CIC decision directing the SC to provide such
details under RTI.
The Supreme
Court registry, through senior Advocate Siddharth Luthra, had argued that the
information was not within the purview of the RTI Act. “The information sought
by appellant includes details of the medical facilities availed by individual
judges. The same being personal information, we are of the view that providing
such information would undoubtedly amount to invasion of their privacy,”it
said.
“…we are
unable to understand how the public interest requires disclosure of the details
of the medical facilities availed by the individual judges. In the absence of
any such larger public interest, no direction whatsoever can be issued under
the RTI Act by the appellate authorities,” it said.
The court
also noted in its six-page judgment that “the total expenditure incurred for
the medical treatment of the judges for the period in question was already
furnished by the Central Public Information Officer by his letter dated August
30, 2011, and “it is not the case of the appellant that the said expenditure is
excessive or exorbitant”.
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