CIC against disclosing purpose of seeking information under RTI

New Delhi, Sep 26 (UNI) Chief Information Commissioner(CIC) Wajahat Habibullah today expressed himself against the demand that applicants using the Right to Information Act(RTI) should disclose the purpose for which they were seeking the information.

''If you ask for the purpose of seeking the information, it would strike at the very root of the objective for which the RTI was brought in,'' he said.

Ensuring transparency and accountability in the working of the Government were the main objectives for which the right to information was given to public, and a citizen should have full right not to disclose the purpose for which he wanted to access a particular information, said the CIC.

He was speaking at a seminar on the RTI organised by the Standing Committee of Public Enterprises(SCOPE) here today.

Mr Habibullah also said that the final decision of what constitutes the public interest lies with the Commission.

The issue of increasing number of frivolous information seekers under the right to Information Act (RTI) was raised before the Mr Habibullah in a big way by the Public Information Officers of various public enterprises during the question answer session of the seminar They said the volume of information sought was also straining the resources of the departments concerned.

While recognising the problem, Mr Habibullah asked them to find the solution in Section 4(A) of the Act which, he said, requires the government departments to make available all the disclosable information on their website.

So if a PIO is requested for a large volume of information, he or she can direct the applicant to the releveant sections of particular website.

When pointed out that some kind of information was not available on the website, Mr Habibullah said that if the volume of information sought was very heavy, requiring use of extra resources, both in terms of time and money, by the department concerned, the applicants could be asked to pay accordingly, which would deter away frivolous information seekers.

In this context, he said that he was going to recommend to the Centre that a separate cell should be created for handling applications, which cannot be done by an officer in addition to his original duties.

Replying to another question, he said a citizen seeking information may authorise another person to apply on his or her behalf.

However, he also cautioned against encouraging this trend as there was danger of middlemen taking advantage of the facility.

UNI NAZ VD GC1605