The Supreme Court said questioning the motive behind seeking information is not possible under the law.
New Delhi:
The Delhi High Court on Friday said that the purpose of the Right to Information (RTI) Act is to bring about transparency and if information is requested, it must be made public unless it is exempted from disclosure under the law .
The Supreme Court said questioning the motive behind seeking information is not possible under the law.
The Supreme Court made these observations while hearing a plea seeking details of the Aarogya Setu mobile application launched by the Central government on April 2, 2020 in the wake of the Covid outbreak.
“The RTI Act only says that if there is information, it must be made public unless it is protected by any of the clauses under Section 8 (exemption from disclosure of information) of the RTI Act. Otherwise, any person or citizen of this country has a right to the information.
“The question mark about the motive, etc., does not exist under the law. So when the information needs to be provided in a different way, the law needs to be changed to provide that the motive can be questioned. Because the purpose of the law is to bring about transparency,” Justice Subramonium Prasad said.
The Supreme Court made these observations when the Centre’s counsel tried to question the petitioner’s motive and agenda in seeking information.
Petitioner and RTI activist Saurav Das has also challenged the Central Information Commission’s (CIC) order dated November 24, 2020 for issuing show-cause notices against MEITY officers without hearing the complainant.
Das, who is also a journalist, has sought quashing of the final order passed by the CIC on November 24, 2020, staying criminal proceedings against the Central Public Information Officers (CPIOs) of various agencies for obstructing access to public records relating to the Aarogya Setu. app under the RTI Act.
During the hearing, lawyer Rahul Sharma, representing the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) and several CPIOs of its departments, said that the information in their possession has already been provided to the petitioner and they have no other information with them. .
He said that since the pandemic was going on at that time, no written notes were taken and everything was done through video conferencing.
The judge responded: “Anything that is in the air is difficult to digest.” The Supreme Court directed the Centre’s counsel to file an affidavit that there are no case notes and that all departments involved in the process had been notified verbally.
“The counsel for the respondents is directed to file an affidavit regarding file notes relating to the app, whether there has been any written communication with the private persons involved in the creation and development of the app, whether there has been any written communication was received from contributors or consultants, whether written responses were given on the app, whether files were prepared with written notes etc. or whether all these things were done only orally through video conferencing,” the high court said.
It said the specific affidavit should be filed within four weeks and the matter would be heard further on November 2.
The Supreme Court had on January 19, 2021, issued notices and sought responses from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) and the Central Public Information Officers (CPIO) of the ministry, National E-Governance Department (NeGD), Ministry of Electronics and eGov and National Informatics Center.
The journalist had filed multiple RTI applications seeking details about the creation of government contract tracing app Aarogya Setu. When he received no response, he approached the CIC with his grievances.
In October 2020, he was informed by the authorities that the information relating to Aarogya Setu was not in the possession of their respective departments and the CIC had subsequently informed the CPIOs after hearing the petitioner’s submissions as to why a penalty under the RTI Act should be imposed. will not be imposed on them because they have not adequately responded to the RTI application.
The RTI application has sought several details about the making of the government’s contact tracing app, Aarogya Setu, and the people behind it.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
