State should not fight citizen’s RTI

The Delhi High Court on 24th May 2016 has criticised the Legislative Department for filing un unnecessary Writ Petition against the Order of Central Information Commission (M Sridhar Acharyulu, CIC) directing the government to update and upload all the latest amended bare Acts, to examine the functionality of its e-mail ID and develop an appropriate RTI filing mechanism.

Justice Manmohan Singh of Delhi High Court directed Legislative Department to recover Rs 10,000 which was awarded as compensation by CIC from the salary of the government officials who authorised the filing of this unwarranted writ petition and pay to library.

Vansh Sharad Gupta, a student of NLSUI had filed this RTI application through e-mail to know the e-mail ID of CPIO, Legislative Department. He could not access the text of Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1972, from the website, though he could find the Bare Act. It was impossible to read as that PDF of Bare Act was not formatted and each sentence is intercepted by trash. He appealed to provide the bare Acts (enactments without commentary) in a readable PDF format.

The Commission directed the department to inform the complainant as to what action has been taken including details of the programme of updation, the possible date of its completion, expenditure involved, personnel employed etc. The CIC also directed the petitioner to pay Rs 10,000 to the library of university, for causing loss of time of several law students, more specifically of the appellant, not providing easy access to email, or not making email ids easily available, delaying the information etc, within one month. The department chose to challenge this order in Delhi High Court.

In the writ petition, the legislation department contended that the student never filed an RTI application in the prescribed form with the requisite fee and did not even file first appeal. Rejecting this petition, Justice Manmohan Singh held: “This Court is not an appellate court of the CIC. Technical and procedural arguments cannot be allowed to come in the way of substantial justice.

The directions given by the CIC in the impugned order are not only fair and reasonable but also promote the concept of rule of law. It is unfortunate that the petitioner did not take the initiative on its own to upload the latest amended bare Acts. Public can be expected to follow the law only if law is easily accessible ‘at the click of a button’.”

In fact, as rightly pointed out by the CIC, the RTI Act itself mandates the government to place the texts of enactments in public domain. The HC said: “This Court also took judicial notice of the fact that in challenging the imposition of costs of Rs 10,000, the Government of India would have spent more money in filing the present writ petition. Consequently, this Court is of the view that the costs of Rs 10,000 which was directed to be paid by the CIC, should be recovered from the salary of the government officials who authorised the filing of the present writ petition.”

It’s a very significant order
This order is significant because it recognised a very serious problem of State taking some cases unnecessarily to the Constitutional Courts simply because it has power to do so. A student of law could not find text of a particular legislation either in private market or public domain. The Ministry could have immediately taken note of the problem and started cleaning, updating and uploading the texts of law.

PM’s suggestion ignored
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the annual conference of CIC on RTI in November 2015, clearly stated that the public authority should learn and improve its governance by studying the RTI queries and responses. This should be made mandatory for every public authority. Lesson 2: Department has to change their systems in response to the issues raised in RTI requests.

People’s Right to Know
The law ministry has to tell the country what is its law, so that they can abide by it. There is no practical use of our great legal presumption that ‘law’ and ‘court of law’ presume that every citizen knows law and refuses the defence of ignorance of law, without ensuring access to law. It is welcome that the Law Ministry is addressing this issue and taken some initiatives to update the law in both the languages. Lesson 3: People have right to know law in their own language

Legitimate duty of State
The text of the law was so badly intercepted by unnecessary sentences and marks that it is almost impossible to make out a complete sentence from the heap of words, numbers and sentences. The inaction of state generates a huge private market in publishing law texts which people have to purchase at high cost. Advocates might afford to purchase those big books transferring the cost indirectly to the clients, but students and people are deprived.

The Section 4(1) (a) and (b) of RTI Act mandates the public authority to voluntarily disclose this. A student who needs them urgently cannot wait for years. The department should have not taken more than a week to furnish the enactment copy. Not done. By the time of the appeal reached CIC, the student has been passed out. How can a university research and teach future lawyers and judges without finding an authentic text of law? Lesson 4: It is the duty of Law Ministry to disclose the law, which people need to follow.

Breach of Sections 3 and 4 of RTI Act
Non-disclosure of information as per 4(1) (b) within 120 days from commencement of Act is violation of RTI Act. If they continue, violation continues. If not furnished even after request, the public authority concerned can be penalised u/s 20. CIC can award compensation u/s 19(8) for the detriment and loss. A token compensation was ordered to be paid to the library. A public authority is asked to pay that money to the university established by public funds. Lesson 5: Public Authority has to pay compensation for violation of Sections 4 and 3

State as a cantankerous litigant
Officers chose to challenge it, perhaps spending more than Rs 10,000 as rightly pointed out, instead of performing their duty – to provide text of law in accessible form, to disclose under the Section 4 of RTI Act, or honouring the right of student to access the text of law, right of people to know the law, or implement the order of CIC.

The State cannot be a cantankerous irresponsible litigant; if so, it’s a curse. If this policy is sincerely implemented, at least 50 per cent of litigation will be off from the pendency burden of Benches. A public authority (Ministry of Law and Justice) is questioning the order of another public authority (CIC) which ordered it to pay compensation to third public authority (NLSUI, Bangalore) for non-performance of public duty (to make text of law available) and not responding to people’s right (RTI Sec 3) before another public Authority (Delhi High Court), using public office (Standing Counsel) paying from public exchequer, spending far more public money (than Rs 10,000) to deny the right to know of the people. Is it not a public wrong? Lesson 6: State should not be a cantankerous litigant

High Courts not appellate courts over CIC
Another significant issue that reflected in this judgment is that public authority cannot make the Honourable High Courts as appellate courts over CIC. They cannot raise inconsequential procedural or technical points to assail CIC order. Substantive justice is important. Let us hope that Ministry of Law and Justice will not take this issue further up to Supreme Court but make law accessible to the people. Lesson 7: There is no routine appeal available from decision of Information Commission.