Times of India: New Delhi: Wednesday, September 27, 2017.
In response
to right to information applications seeking information on the corporate debt
restructuring (CDR) cell, a full bench of the Central Information Commission
has ruled that it is not a public authority. Upholding the government's
contention that the CDR Cell is not directly financed by the government, the
CIC in its order ruled that the CDR Cell doesn't fall in the definition of
public authority as described under section 2 (h) (i) and (ii) of the RTI Act
2005.
The matter
came up when three RTI applicants - Shailesh Gandhi, Madhukar Ganpat Kukde and
Nimish Agarwal approached the CIC after they were denied information. The
information ranged from the total expenditure incurred by the CDR system and
how much of it was financed by the public sector banks and IDBI, various audits
of the CDR system to the final CDR packages approved between April 2012 and
March 2014 etc.
A bench
comprising information commissioners Sharat Sabharwal and Manjula Parashar went
through the matter. In their order, the information commissioners, while ruling
that the CDR Cell is not a public authority, added that since the CDR
restructures debts running into crores of rupees, especially given by public
sector banks, a mechanism to provide information regarding the CDR needs to be
undertaken. Or the public would have to obtain the required information through
the public sector banks, which are public authorities.
The Corporate
Debt Restructuring ("CDR") mechanism is a voluntary non statutory
mechanism under which financial institutions and banks come together to
restructure the debt of companies facing financial difficulties due to internal
or external factors, in order to provide timely support to such companies.
In all the
RTIs filed, the CDR Cell had responded that it was neither estabtished nor
constituted by or under the constitution or any other law made either by the
Parliament or state legistature and it was also not created by notification
issued or order made by the appropriate government.
In his
arguments for declaring the CDR Cell as a public authority, Gandhi had argued
that the CDR Cell, created by an RBI circular, has no independent legal status.
"Also, as per the RBI circular, the initial finance was provided by lDBl,
a pubtic sector bank, and more than l5 years of the subsequent finance is from
public sector banks and institutions. Thus, it is a public authority as defined
by section 2 (h) (i) and (ii) of the RTI Act 2005," was the argument.
According to
Gandhi, the CDR cell despite being created by an RBI circutar, claims a virtual
presence without accountability to anyone. lf such an argument is accepted, all
government organisations could create such virtual cells and deny information
and accountability.
Madhukar
Ganpat Kukde, another appellant, said, "lf CDR Cell's contention that it
is not a public authority is accepted, it would mean that it is neither
accountable to Partiament nor audited by anyone."
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