The Hans India: New Delhi: Tuesday,
June 14, 2016.
The Delhi
High Court on 24th May 2016 has criticised the Legislative Department for
filing un unnecessary Writ Petition against the Order of Central Information
Commission (M Sridhar Acharyulu, CIC) directing the government to update and
upload all the latest amended bare Acts, to examine the functionality of its
e-mail ID and develop an appropriate RTI filing mechanism.
Justice
Manmohan Singh of Delhi High Court directed Legislative Department to recover
Rs 10,000 which was awarded as compensation by CIC from the salary of the
government officials who authorised the filing of this unwarranted writ
petition and pay to library.
Vansh Sharad
Gupta, a student of NLSUI had filed this RTI application through e-mail to know
the e-mail ID of CPIO, Legislative Department. He could not access the text of
Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1972, from the website, though he could find the
Bare Act. It was impossible to read as that PDF of Bare Act was not formatted
and each sentence is intercepted by trash. He appealed to provide the bare Acts
(enactments without commentary) in a readable PDF format.
The
Commission directed the department to inform the complainant as to what action
has been taken including details of the programme of updation, the possible
date of its completion, expenditure involved, personnel employed etc. The CIC
also directed the petitioner to pay Rs 10,000 to the library of university, for
causing loss of time of several law students, more specifically of the
appellant, not providing easy access to email, or not making email ids easily
available, delaying the information etc, within one month. The department chose to challenge this order
in Delhi High Court.
In the writ
petition, the legislation department contended that the student never filed an
RTI application in the prescribed form with the requisite fee and did not even
file first appeal. Rejecting this petition, Justice Manmohan Singh held: “This
Court is not an appellate court of the CIC. Technical and procedural arguments
cannot be allowed to come in the way of substantial justice.
The
directions given by the CIC in the impugned order are not only fair and
reasonable but also promote the concept of rule of law. It is unfortunate that
the petitioner did not take the initiative on its own to upload the latest
amended bare Acts. Public can be expected to follow the law only if law is
easily accessible ‘at the click of a button’.”
In fact, as
rightly pointed out by the CIC, the RTI Act itself mandates the government to
place the texts of enactments in public domain. The HC said: “This Court also
took judicial notice of the fact that in challenging the imposition of costs of
Rs 10,000, the Government of India would have spent more money in filing the
present writ petition. Consequently, this Court is of the view that the costs
of Rs 10,000 which was directed to be paid by the CIC, should be recovered from
the salary of the government officials who authorised the filing of the present
writ petition.”
It’s a
very significant order
This order is
significant because it recognised a very serious problem of State taking some
cases unnecessarily to the Constitutional Courts simply because it has power to
do so. A student of law could not find text of a particular legislation either
in private market or public domain. The Ministry could have immediately taken
note of the problem and started cleaning, updating and uploading the texts of
law.
PM’s
suggestion ignored
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the annual conference of CIC on RTI in
November 2015, clearly stated that the public authority should learn and
improve its governance by studying the RTI queries and responses. This should
be made mandatory for every public authority.
Lesson 2: Department has to change their systems in response to the
issues raised in RTI requests.
People’s
Right to Know
The law
ministry has to tell the country what is its law, so that they can abide by it.
There is no practical use of our great legal presumption that ‘law’ and ‘court
of law’ presume that every citizen knows law and refuses the defence of
ignorance of law, without ensuring access to law. It is welcome that the Law
Ministry is addressing this issue and taken some initiatives to update the law
in both the languages. Lesson 3: People
have right to know law in their own language
Legitimate
duty of State
The text of
the law was so badly intercepted by unnecessary sentences and marks that it is
almost impossible to make out a complete sentence from the heap of words,
numbers and sentences. The inaction of state generates a huge private market in
publishing law texts which people have to purchase at high cost. Advocates
might afford to purchase those big books transferring the cost indirectly to
the clients, but students and people are deprived.
The Section
4(1) (a) and (b) of RTI Act mandates the public authority to voluntarily
disclose this. A student who needs them urgently cannot wait for years. The
department should have not taken more than a week to furnish the enactment copy.
Not done. By the time of the appeal
reached CIC, the student has been passed out. How can a university research and
teach future lawyers and judges without finding an authentic text of law?
Lesson 4: It is the duty of Law Ministry
to disclose the law, which people need to follow.
Breach of
Sections 3 and 4 of RTI Act
Non-disclosure
of information as per 4(1) (b) within 120 days from commencement of Act is
violation of RTI Act. If they continue, violation continues. If not furnished
even after request, the public authority concerned can be penalised u/s 20. CIC
can award compensation u/s 19(8) for the detriment and loss. A token
compensation was ordered to be paid to the library. A public authority is asked
to pay that money to the university established by public funds. Lesson 5: Public Authority has to pay compensation for
violation of Sections 4 and 3
State as a
cantankerous litigant
Officers
chose to challenge it, perhaps spending more than Rs 10,000 as rightly pointed
out, instead of performing their duty – to provide text of law in accessible
form, to disclose under the Section 4 of RTI Act, or honouring the right of
student to access the text of law, right of people to know the law, or
implement the order of CIC.
The State
cannot be a cantankerous irresponsible litigant; if so, it’s a curse. If this policy is sincerely implemented, at
least 50 per cent of litigation will be off from the pendency burden of
Benches. A public authority (Ministry of
Law and Justice) is questioning the order of another public authority (CIC)
which ordered it to pay compensation to third public authority (NLSUI,
Bangalore) for non-performance of public duty (to make text of law available)
and not responding to people’s right (RTI Sec 3) before another public Authority
(Delhi High Court), using public office (Standing Counsel) paying from public
exchequer, spending far more public money (than Rs 10,000) to deny the right to
know of the people. Is it not a public wrong? Lesson 6: State should not be a
cantankerous litigant.
High
Courts not appellate courts over CIC
Another
significant issue that reflected in this judgment is that public authority
cannot make the Honourable High Courts as appellate courts over CIC. They
cannot raise inconsequential procedural or technical points to assail CIC
order. Substantive justice is important. Let us hope that Ministry of Law and
Justice will not take this issue further up to Supreme Court but make law
accessible to the people. Lesson 7: There is no routine appeal available from
decision of Information Commission.
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