Law Of Defamation Vs Rti Act

[kcubelegal]

Whether The Contents Of Reply Of A Pio, When Published
In Newspapers, Would Amount To Defamation Or Invasion
Of Privacy, If The Said Reply Also Reveals About Actions
Of A Private Individual /professional. Please Clarify This Doubt.

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[opsharma]

Sponsorer

Welcome to RTI community. Regarding your query,suggest seek advice of a legal professional ,even though one comes across a number of RTI replies published in newspapers daily.

[karira]

Kishore,

I am no advocate, but if you think logiccally:

If the information you have received from a PIO is under the RTI Act, it can be presumed to be correct, complete and not misleading.

Once information is provided under the RTI Act, it is in the public domain.

If the reply reveals about the actions of a private individual/professional then it must have to do something with "public interest" or actions of that individual which affect public interest. Otherwise the PIO should have denied the information since he would have considered it as "private" or "personal".

There are several news items everyday about replies received under the RTI Act.

[opsharma]

I did consider routinely appearing RTI information in newspapers and that's why I did mention that in my comments .But what will happen when an individual gets his own ACRs/Appraisal Reports or notings of DPC ,received through RTI ,spread all over newspapers(for whatever reason,we arn't discussing reasons).I,as Reviewing officer/Senior Reviewing officer/Accepting Authority would consider it breach of fiduciary and shall definitely take the culprit to the court. That is the reason why I recommended advice of a legal professional.

[karira]

opsharma,

I am only responding to the point about ACR's and fiduciary relationship.

http://cic.gov.in/CIC-Orders/Decision_30042007_03.pdf:

The word “fiduciary” is derived from the Latin fiducia meaning “trust”,
a person (including a juristic person such as Government, University or bank) who has the
power and obligation to act for another under circumstances which
require total trust, good faith and honesty. The most common example
of such a relationship is the trustee of a trust, but fiduciaries can
include business advisers, attorneys, guardians, administrators,
directors of a company, public servants in relation to a Government
and senior managers of a firm/company etc. The fiduciary relationship
can also be one of moral or personal responsibility due to the superior
knowledge and training of the fiduciary as compared to the one whose
affairs the fiduciary is handling. In short, it is a relationship wherein
one person places complete confidence in another in regard to a
particular transaction or one’s general affairs of business. The Black’s
Law Dictionary also describes a fiduciary relationship as “one founded
on trust or confidence reposed by one person in the integrity and
fidelity of another.” The meaning of the fiduciary relationship may,
therefore, include the relationship between the authority conducting
the examination and the examiner who are acting as its appointees for
the purpose of evaluating the answer sheets. We do not tend to agree
with the decision of the Karnataka Information Commission wherein it
has been held that in a fiduciary relationship such as between the
examiner and the University, there are obligations only on the part of
examiner and that the authority conducting the examination being not
a trustee has no obligations. Any relationship including a fiduciary
relationship is bound to have mutual rights and obligations. Thus, in
the case before us where there is fiduciary relationship between the
examiner and the authority conducting the examination, the
obligations are mutual.

I don't know if you have ever been a government servant, but I am sure that after reading the above, NOT A SINGLE government servant will ever agree to the fact that ACR's are written and filed based on a "fiduciary" relationship.