The Hindu: New Delhi: Thursday,
October 06, 2016.
Shorthand
note book in which a court stenographer takes dictation from the judge is not a
“record” held by a public authority and therefore cannot be sought under the
Right to Information Act, the Delhi High Court has held.
A bench of
Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva said that the shorthand notebooks are not retained and
they cannot be treated as part of judicial record but only memos, at best.
The bench
said this while upholding the March 2016 order of Central Information
Commission (CIC) by which the petitioner was denied copies of shorthand notes
taken in the HC on May 27, 2013.
The
petitioner was denied information by the Public Information Officer of the High
Court, who said that the shorthand notes are not retained. The first appellate
authority also held that “since no such record is being maintained the
information is not available and thus the same cannot be furnished”.
The
petitioner in the instant case had sought shorthand notes of the stenographer
taken on May 27, 2013 as he said that on the said date there was a strike and
no party appeared before the court but a bench went on to pass an order of
ex-parte injunction against them in a suit initiated by a American
multinational technology company.
Take note
Relying on a
full bench judgement of the HC, which held that even draft judgments signed and
exchanged are not to be considered as final judgment but only a tentative view
liable to be changed, Justice Sachdeva said, “The full bench held, that the
apprehension of the learned Attorney General, that notes or jottings by the
Judges or their draft judgments would fall within the purview of Right to
Information Act, is misplaced. Notes taken by Judges while hearing a case, it
was held, cannot be treated as final views expressed by them on the case and
are meant only for the use of the Judges and cannot be held to be a part of a
record ‘held’ by the public authority.”
“Shorthand
notebook can at best be treated as a memo of what is dictated to a steno to be
later transcribed into a draft judgment or an order. When draft judgments and
order do not form part of a ‘record’ held by a public authority, a shorthand
note book which is memo of what is dictated and which would later be typed to
become a draft judgment or an order can certainly not be held to be ‘record’
held by a public authority,” he observed.
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