Information from Debt Recovery Tribunal - Denied

[karira]

http://cic.gov.in/CIC-Orders/AT-23072008-16.pdf

The applicant asked for the following information from the DRT:

“1. Copies of all proceedings sheets from the day the mater was instituted by the State Bank of India before Debts Recovery Tribunal, Chennai I in or around 1997.
2. Copies of all documents generated and held in your possession since and including the date of 30.09.2007 in this matter.
3. A property measuring under 3 acres belonging to a defendant company in which I am a director was auctioned on 05.10.2007. Please provide the name and address of the bidder whose bid was accepted by the Recovery Officer.
4. Please provide the details of payments made by this bidder.
5. For each property put up for auction in the matter, please state the number of persons who bid for respective properties against the names of properties.
6. Please state the lowest and highest bid amounts received against each property.
7. Please provide the reasons for not accepting the highest bids in respect of other properties.”

IC Tiwari has disallowed disclosure because the PA cited:

Rakesh Kumar Gupta Vs. ITAT; Appeal
No.CIC/AT/A/2006/00586; Date of Decision: 18.09.2007

and because of "judicial independence"

Can members go through the full order, as well as the related order cited, and clarify as to how information items 3 to 7 are part of judicial process and judicial independence ?

[jps50]

All these papers can be accessed from DRT without refering to RTI. Hence this info is disclosable by DRT to the affected parties. Thus there cannot be bar under RTI. Items 3 to 7 are administrative info and not judicial one. Hence this judgement of CIC need to be challenged in HIgh Court. This decision of CIC will practically put DRT and other tribunals out of RTI boundries.

[karira]

Thanks jps50 !

I am very keen on knowing views of other members on this matter because I am helping someone in Patna on a similar matter. I was totally surprised as to how IC Tiwari has passed such an order.

In fact, if you read the order, at one place the appellant even states that the office of the DRT is very small, they invariably never give information, etc... still he gave this type of order.

What is the whole point of the RTI Act, if there is no transparency.....

[jiwateshwar]

I actually had to go through the complete Rakesh Kumar Gupta Vs. ITAT; Appeal No.CIC/AT/A/2006/00586; Date of Decision: 18.09.2007 to be able to comment on this. Must say that it is one lengthy decision and took up lot of my time. All decisions on DRT by AN Tiwari are now referring to the above decision. Something that needs to be noted about the above is that it was bounced back to the FAA to decide. Following instructions were given

a. He will determine whether there is any judicial order of the Tribunal
pronounced under the Income Tax Act as regards disclosure of the
information sought by the appellant and if it is so, the remedy
available to the appellant shall be under the Income Tax law and
not under the RTI Act.
b. If there is no such judicial order from the Tribunal, in that case, the
first Appellate Authority will consider the appeal under the
provisions of the Income Tax Act read with the Right to
Information Act and will pass a speaking order within a
fortnight from the date of the receipt of this order.

In the said case the information was denied to the applicant on the following grounds

1. Information regarding the case can only be given to the concerned parties and not third person.
2. It is upto the tribunals discretion as to if they want to give the information to the third party or not.
3. Since the tribunal in the given case had denied the information to the applicant, the applicant can not use RTI as an alternative mean of obtaining information and thus try to override the decision of the tribunal.
4. Information held by PAs performing judicial function can only be sought in accordance with the governing laws/rules/acts of the particular PA. If the governing law/act under which the PA has been constituted prohibit the disclosure of a particular information under a specific circumstance, then one can not try to over ride the provisions of such law/act by using RTI act.

In the given decision the FAA has been asked to determine as to if tribunal had through any order barred/denied the applicant from obtaining the requested information. This would have happened if the applicant had filed a request for a copy of the information before the tribunal and the tribunal having declined the request.

Further the FAA was instructed to determine whether the Income Tax act would allow such a disclosure since it explicitly states that only the parties to a case can be given the copies of proceedings.

Point to be noted is that the said information would be available to with the INCOME TAX DEPT. The applicant instead of applying to the tribunal for the information, could have sought the same from the IT dept. He could have sought for inspection of the complete file. These would not contain the minutes/notes but rest of the information would be available. The chances are high that the PIO at IT dept would not know of this ruling. Also the said information is neither provided by the third party to the PIO nor is it held in confidence.
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In the case put up by Sh. Karira (post#1), there is no doubt that the IC Tiwari has erred severely in making the decision. The point 1 and 2 are deniable as they relates tot eh judicial process of making a decision, however the rest of the points have nothing what so ever to do with it. As stated by Sh. Jps50, the information pertaining to 3to7 are purely administrative in nature. Such a big mistake occuring at the CIC level is really sad.