CIC, the country’s transparency watchdog, in an order has said that revealing assets of bureaucrats under Right to Information Act cannot be construed as “invasion of privacy”. Chetan Chauhan reports.
The Central Information Commission (CIC) may have lifted the veil of privacy over bureaucrats’ asset.
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CIC, the country’s transparency watchdog, in an order has said that revealing assets of bureaucrats under Right to Information Act cannot be construed as “invasion of privacy”.
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Every government official is supposed to submit a declaration about assets soon after joining service but getting this information under RTI had been tough.
Central Information Shailesh Gandhi said disclosure of assets of a public servant is not debarred under invasion of privacy clause of the RTI Act.
“Disclosing the information is in relation to public activity and will not be intrusion of privacy,” Gandhi said on his order earlier this month.
Rajbir Singh, a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Bhagpat, had sought information about the immovable property of district health officer of Shahdara (North Zone) Ashok Rawat.
He wanted to know details of properties bought by Rawat after joining the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the use of his official vehicle for personal use.
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MCD public information officer (PIO) Ravinder Kumar denied that information, invoking the privacy clause of the RTI Act and the government’s conduct rules for officials.
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MCD public information officer (PIO) Ravinder Kumar denied that information, invoking the privacy clause of the RTI Act and the government’s conduct rules for officials.
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Gandhi, however, said when the government can seek private information from citizens for a public activity, which does not amount to intrusion of privacy, it should not have problems in providing similar information of people working for it.
“The information routinely collected by the government and provided by a public servant cannot be construed as invasion of privacy,” Gandhi said. An exception to this is personal information collected during a raid or tapping phones.
Asking the PIO to provide information sought, Gandhi said the Supreme Court had clearly ruled that people who aspire to be public servants through elections have to declare their property details. All poll candidates have to submit a declaration of assets and liabilities while filing nomination papers.
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“If people who aspire to be public servants declare their property details it is only logical that the details of assets of those who are public servants must be considered disclosable,” Gandhi said in his order.
Even before Gandhi’s order, attempts have been made to force the governments to list asset information of important government officials in a public domain, but had been unsuccessful.
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.
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