The Chhattisgarh High Court has ruled that complaints, service records, and inquiry details of judicial officers are personal information and cannot be disclosed under the RTI Act. The Court held that such disclosures lack public interest and are protected under Sections 8(1)(j) and 8(1)(e) of the RTI Act.
The Chhattisgarh High Court has ruled that details related to the job certificates of judicial officers, complaints filed against them, and information about departmental or other inquiries cannot be disclosed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
The Court made it clear that such information forms part of the personal service records of judicial officers and is protected from public disclosure.
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The judgment was delivered by Justice Sachin Singh Rajput while allowing writ petitions filed by the administrative side of the High Court.
These petitions challenged the orders of the State Information Commission (SIC), which had earlier directed the disclosure of such information relating to three judicial officers. The RTI request had been filed by a private individual.
The High Court held that the information sought clearly falls within the category of “personal information” under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act. It observed that there was no connection between the information requested and any larger public interest that would justify disclosure.
“The information sought for is maintained by the petitioners being employer of the judicial officers can be treated as records pertaining to personal information of those judicial officers and publication of the same is prohibited under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, as this is the matter between the employer and the employee and are governed by the Service Rules, therefore, falls under the expression ‘personal information’ and disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or public interest,”
the Court said.
The Court further noted that the nature of the RTI request showed that the information was sought for personal reasons rather than any public purpose, which is not permissible under the RTI framework.
It said,
“The information sought pertains to judicial officers of the State of Chhattisgarh which have been kept safely and confidentially by their employer (High Court administration) and a bare perusal of the application made under Section 6 (1) of the RTI Act does not show that such information was required for any public purpose, rather it appears to have been sought for the personal use of the applicant,”
The RTI application was originally filed in 2017, seeking details of complaints made against three judicial officers, inquiries conducted against them, and the certificates they submitted at the time of their appointment. In 2019, the Chhattisgarh State Information Commission directed that this information be disclosed.
Aggrieved by this direction, the High Court administration, through its Registrar General and Public Information Officers, approached the High Court by filing writ petitions. On January 14, the High Court passed a common order allowing these petitions and set aside the SIC’s directions.
During the proceedings, the High Court also examined an argument raised by the petitioners regarding the composition of the State Information Commission.
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The petitioners had argued that a second appeal under the RTI Act could not be decided by a single Information Commissioner and must be heard by a multi-member bench of the Commission.
The Court rejected this argument and held that individual Information Commissioners are fully empowered to hear and decide appeals under the RTI Act. It clarified that the Act allows internal distribution of work among Commission members.
The Court said,
“Each member of the State Information Commission and the Central Information Commission is equally competent to decide the issue involved on its own merits and there is no question of the Commissioner alone usurping the jurisdiction of the Commission and passing the order in his individual capacity, as argued by the counsel for the petitioners … The broad language of the RTI Act indicates an intention to grant the CIC comprehensive authority to ensure the effective and efficient functioning of the commission,”
The High Court also rejected the contention that the SIC had ordered a roving or fishing inquiry against judicial officers.
It said,
“The State Information Commission has nowhere asked the petitioners in this case to create the information and then to provide the same to the applicant. Rather, being the repository of the record pertaining to the judicial officers, the information sought for can well be said to exist and accessible to the public authority as is provided under Section 6 of the RTI Act,”
However, the Court ultimately disagreed with the SIC’s conclusion that such information should be disclosed. It held that the information also attracts protection under Section 8(1)(e) of the RTI Act, which exempts information held in a fiduciary relationship from disclosure.
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The Court explained that complaints, service certificates, and inquiry records submitted by judicial officers are held by the High Court in a fiduciary capacity. Such information cannot be made public unless the applicant demonstrates a clear and overriding public interest, which was absent in this case.
Since the RTI applicant failed to establish any public interest, the High Court set aside the SIC’s orders directing disclosure.
Advocates Amrito Das, Abhijeet Mishra, and Yashraj Verma appeared for the petitioners representing the High Court administration. The Chhattisgarh State Information Commission was represented by advocate Shyam Sunder Lal Tekchandani.
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