High Court sets aside order of Goa State Information Commission

[karira]

As reported by NT Legal Correspondent in navhindtimes.com on 09 April 2008:
http://www.navhindtimes.com/articles...tory_ID=040951

High Court sets aside order of Goa State Information Commission

The single judge of the Bombay High Court, Mr Justice S A Bobde has set aside the order passed by the Goa State Information Commission whereby Dr Celsa Pinto, PIO, was directed to pay penalty of Rs 5,000.Â

The Commission had held her guilty of furnishing incomplete, misleading and false information under the Right to Information Act, 2005 and imposed the penalty which was liable to be deducted from her salary.

The order of the Commission appears to suffer from a serious error of law apparent on record and results in the miscarriage of justice, the court observed.

The court held that definition of information under Section 2(f) can not include within its fold answers to the question why which would mean asking the reason or justification for a particular thing. Justifications are within the domain of adjudicating authorities and cannot properly be classified as information.

The court further observed that the Public Information Authorities cannot be expected to communicate to the citizen the reason why a certain thing was done or not done just because the citizen makes a requisition about information.

Information was sought by one Milan Natekar as to why the post of curator was not filled up by promotion and why the librarian from the Engineering College was not considered for promotion.

The petitioner initially said Not Available and later corrected the information by explaining that Not Available meant she does not know.

The court noted that merely because the petitioner initially said Not Available and later on corrected her statement and said she does not know did not mean that petitioner provided incomplete and incorrect information.

[The Great]

Though, court has not to entertain any suit, in respect of Information Act,the decision is right one.