Citizens’ rights score over privacy issues: CIC

The Central Information Commission has ruled that annual confidential reports of government servants cannot be treated as secret, saying “citizens’ right to information has greater primacy with regard to privacy.”

Updated on: May 22, 2011, 23:26:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Central Information Commission has ruled that annual confidential reports of government servants cannot be treated as secret, saying “citizens’ right to information has greater primacy with regard to privacy.”

The government has, so far, refused to provide the annual confidential reports (ACRs) by citing the exemption provision of personal information under the Right To Information Act (RTI).

The ACR evaluates the work and performance of a public servant on an annual basis. The labour ministry invoked the clause saying the information had no relation to public interest, while refusing to provide details of ACRs of 17 officials.

VK Sharma of Kolkata had sought information regarding the promotion of these officers in October 2010.

Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi, however, said that privacy is a cultural notion related to social norms and cannot be considered a valid exercise to constrain the citizen’s fundamental right to information.

“Parliament has not codified the right to privacy, so far. Hence, in balancing the right to information of citizens and the individual’s right to privacy, the citizen’s right to information would be given greater weightage,” said Gandhi, in his order.

Gandhi also said information such as property details, conviction or acquittal of a public servant of criminal charges, which is routinely collected by a public authority and provided by public servants, cannot be construed as an invasion of privacy.

“Similarly, citizens have a right to know about the strengths and weaknesses as well as performance evaluation of all public servants,” he said, while asking Prakash Tamrakar, public information officer of the ministry, to provide the information sought.

In addition, the order also said that ACRs were first treated as secret by the British, under the Officials Secrets Act of 1923.

But over the years, the trend has drastically changed, with even the judiciary recognising rights of the citizens to access information to bring transparency and accountability in the functioning of the government.

As per the RTI, the Officials Secrets Act (OSA) is not applicable anymore wherever citizens seek access to information, except the exemption provisions under the information law.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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