Indian
Express: New Delhi: Thursday, 17 December 2015.
Reproaching
the Reserve Bank of India for trying to “cover up” the “underhand actions” of
banks from the public gaze, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the apex
banking regulator is bound in law to give information regarding private and
public banks under the Right To Information Act.
“RBI is
supposed to uphold public interest and not the interest of individual banks. We
have surmised that many financial institutions have resorted to such acts which
are neither clean nor transparent. The RBI in association with them has been
trying to cover up their acts from public scrutiny,” said a bench of Justices M
Y Eqbal and C Nagappan.
Trashing a
batch of appeals filed by the RBI against various orders passed by the Central
Information Commission and high courts over disclosure of information relating
to banks, the court held that “this attitude of the RBI will only attract more
suspicion and disbelief in them.”
Underlining
that the RBI cannot deny information about banks under the RTI Act, the court
reminded it that as a regulatory authority, it should work to make the banks
accountable to their actions.
It rejected
RBI’s arguments that it withholds information about other banks in “fiduciary
relationship” and hence such information will be exempted under the RTI Act.
“RBI is
clearly not in any fiduciary relationship with any bank. RBI has no legal duty
to maximize the benefit of any public sector or private sector bank, and thus
there is no relationship of ‘trust’ between them. RBI has a statutory duty to
uphold the interest of the public at large, the depositors, the country’s
economy and the banking sector,” held the bench. It added that the RBI ought to
act with transparency and not hide information that might embarrass banks. “It
is duty bound to comply with the provisions of the RTI Act and disclose the
information sought by applicants. The baseless and unsubstantiated argument of
the RBI that the disclosure would hurt the economic interest of the country is
totally misconceived,” stated the court.
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