RTI shield for privacy of woman

The Central Information Commission came to the rescue of a sister-in-law from invasion of privacy by her sister’s husband. It directed the Government Hospital Authorities in New Delhi not to disclose her ‘personal’ information to the brother-in-law who is engaged in a legal battle with her sister on several domestic disputes both in criminal and civil courts.

Kumar (not original name) sought some details of a staff nurse (his sister-in-law – name not to be disclosed), such as her designation, status office, her marital status if revealed at the time of recruitment, details of her movable and immovable properties, father’s occupation, list of her dependents, her DGHS (Health Service) card and members eligible to take health benefits under that card etc. He also sought to know what she stated about the pending civil case filed by him against her.

Nurse’s sister soon after her marriage with the RTI applicant found that her husband was a divorcee and she was trapped into a greedy family. She was thrown out of her own flat by her husband when she was eight months pregnant. It is also alleged that he neglected to maintain her and child for three years and filed a false and frivolous case against his wife to grab her self-acquired property and filed cases against her sisters and brothers also. Nurse’s sister filed a criminal complaint against her husband and in-laws for torture. She alleged that he was profusely using RTI to harass all brothers and sisters by seeking information about their service from employers.

Generally the PIO and First Appellate Authority invoke exception clauses under Section 8(1) (j) (personal information and privacy) and Section 11(1) (third party) to deny the information if wife is seeking such information about husband, but strangely in this case the PIO of the hospital authorities washed off their hands by ordering disclosure of every bit of information sought by and compelled the nurse to approach the CIC.

Challenging the order of PIO and Appellate Authority, the nurse claimed that disclosure of information sought was not related to any public activity, and it would not serve any public interest and in contrary, such disclosure would harm her personally besides that amount to unwarranted invasion of her privacy. Such disclosure also will help in harassing her and relatives. She contended that FAA’s disclosure order to the content and spirit of not only provisions of Section 8(1) (j) and Section 11 but to the whole RTI Act.

Upholding the privacy of the nurse, the Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu explained: Generally the designation and status and to some extent salary information of employee of public authority also could be disclosed under RTI Act, but the other information sought in this case such as marital status, civil cases pending, assets and liabilities, movable and immovable properties, father’s occupation, list of dependents and list of people eligible in her family for DGHS are all ‘’personal’’ in character. They might be required for the employer to employ that particular person, but such particulars do not have any relation to nature of employee’s work in such public authority. Moreover, the particulars sought have no connection with any other public activity if not that of public authority. In this case the RTI applicant was almost trying to know entire service particulars and her family details through the public authority, which are straight away exempted from the disclosure by the RTI Act.

Citing the Supreme Court in Girish Ramachandra case in 2012 (Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 27734 of 2012), upholding the CIC order, the CIC has rightly reiterated that “the performance of an employee/officer in an organisation is primarily a matter between the employee and the employer and normally those aspects are governed by the service rules which fall under the expression ‘personal information’, the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or public interest, on the other hand, the disclosure of which would cause unwarranted invasion of privacy of that individual.”

In Appeal no. CIC/AT/ A/2006/ 00311 Janardan Dubey v Office of Joint Secretary (Trg) & CAO, Ministry of Defence, dated 3 November 2006, A N Tiwari, Information Commissioner held disclosure of information sought would result in unwarranted harassment of the employee of the other parties. This was exactly the apprehension of nurse about the husband of her sister.

The property details, like assets and liabilities, or movable or immovable properties of public servant are generally disclosable as it would have something to do with transparency and accountability of public servants. In this case the details of such nature from a lower level employee such as staff nurse cannot be considered to have the effect on accountability or transparency.

The Commission on perusing the information sought, came to the conclusion that information relating to the occupation of Appellant’s father, Appellant’s family details (including her dependent family members) at the time of recruitment and after recruitment need not be given as they squarely fall under the category of personal information and hence shall not be disclosed.

The PIO of the Respondent Public Authority should have examined carefully every point of information that was being sought by the RTI Applicant allegedly to meet his own selfish interests against his wife and should have denied all that information which is personal, prohibited/exempted by the RTI Act.

The Delhi High Court in Arvind Kejriwal v. CPIO (AIR 2010 Del 216) has made it very clear that CPIO or the Appellate Authority has to hear third party before taking a decision and third party may plead a privacy defence which for good reasons could be overruled. This is facilitated by the procedure outlined u/s 11(1) of RTI Act which also include that CIC may still decide that information should be disclosed in public interest overruling the objections the third party may have in disclosure of such information. In this case, there is enough justification to conclude that she has every right to secure her privacy and personal information as neither the PIO nor the AA could establish any overriding public interest in overruling the objections made by the Appellant to the disclosure of such information. Their respective orders did not show how and why the information they were directing to disclose was considered as public information or what was the overriding public interest that made them to decide to disclose.

Even as a third party, she has enough protections under RTI Act to deny the information which has no connection with public activity of appellant and when prescribed protection was not given, she has a right to approach the Commission.

The CIC also rejected the claim of RTI Applicant that his financial interest was affected in the matter where he was seeking legal relief. The fact that appellant was sister of applicant’s wife will not in any way establish any financial relationship with him. Hence PIO & FAA should have straight way refused to accept his claim.

The RTI applicant has cited earlier decisions of CIC which the Commission did not see any merit in the exemption claimed by the Chairman of the School based on being the third party. This case is not relevant in the present case. Other decisions referred by the applicant are held to be irrelevant as they refer to the information sought by respective spouses, whereas in this case it was his wife’s sister, whose information he has no right to seek. Finally, the Commission has set aside the orders of PIO and Appellate Authority, allowed appeal and directed the respondent not to disclose the personal information to the applicant securing the privacy of woman employee.

(The writer, Information Commissioner, New Delhi, can be reached at [email protected] )