The Punjab & Haryana High Court has criticized cryptic and non-speaking instructions issued by agencies under the Right to Information Act (RTI Act). Punjab State v. Rajwinder Singh and Others
According to Justice Vikas Bahl, such ambiguous directives go against the RTI Act’s mission as well as other decisions from the Supreme Court and High Court.
The order stated that the authorities, including the first and second appellate authorities under the Act, “have been passing cryptic and non-speaking orders in violation of the judgments passed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court and various High Courts as well as in violation of the mandate of the Act of 2005” in a significant number of cases.
The court continued by stating that the first and second appellate authority under the RTI Act must expressly state the following requirements when making decisions about whether or not to release information:
the subjects for which the petitioner has requested information in his or her RTI Act application;
a point-by-point response to the information requested;
a categorical determination of whether or not any of the points’ information has been delivered, together with the date on which it has been provided;
If the authorities take the position that information cannot be provided due to a restriction imposed by the RTI Act or for any other reason, this position should be documented, together with the decision made in response to the parties’ representations;
whatever further observations that the authority thinks appropriate to record given the specifics of the case.
It was ordered that copies of this decision be distributed to the RTI authorities for compliance by the Chief Secretaries of Punjab, Haryana, and the adviser to the administrator of Chandigarh.
The State Information Commission (SIC), Punjab, had issued an order that upset one Rajwinder Singh, who filed the case that resulted to the High Court’s decision.
Following its discovery that the original decision had been issued without recording reasons, the High Court asked the SIC to take another look at the RTI appeal.
“The order ought to have been self-explanatory, and the justifications supplied shouldn’t have been boilerplate justifications. The same has not been done in this case, and the contested ruling is opaque and silent, according to Justice Bahl.
The SIC is a quasi-judicial body mandated to provide rational orders, the Court emphasized. The Court made it clear that it had not made a final determination about the case’s merits while remanding the matter back to the RTI authority .
This is written by Ms. Meera benjarge ,Student of Manikchand Pahade Law College, Aurangabad.
