Supreme Court refused to disclose data on pending cases under RTI.

Prepsure: Peter Nathanael: New Delhi: Saturday, February 20, 2016.

The Supreme Court of India dismissed a plea presented to it asking the Supreme Court to maintain a data on the pending judgements and make the information public under the Right To Information (RTI) Act. The Supreme Court dismissed the plea presented by RTI activist Lokesh Batra on February 15, 2016 while upholding a previous decision by the Delhi High Court.

Earlier the office of the Central Information Commission (CIC) had ordered that the court should maintain a data and make public the number of cases on which the hearing has been completed while the judgement is pending under the Right to Information Act (RTI). It is to be noted that the order passed by the Central Information Commission (CIC) was based on the judgement made in the Supreme Court of India in 2001 in the Anil Rai vs. The state of Bihar case. The Supreme Court had then made the observation that the confidence of the litigants in the litigants is shaken if there is an unreasonable delay in rendering a judgement after reserving it.

Earlier in a plea filed in the Delhi High Court by an RTI activist, the Delhi High Court informed that no such data was available with the court and cannot be presented, on January 7, 2016 RTI Activist Lokesh Batra. Besides, this earlier a single bench of the Delhi High court had agreed with the orders of the Central Information Commission (CIC) and asked the court to furnish the deemed information. The decision was set aside by a division bench of the Delhi High Court which said that the Court registry could not be ordered to maintain such a data, and cannot be furnished under the Right To information act.