New Delhi: The CIC has directed President
Secretariat to seek the opinion of Chief Election Commissioner
Naveen Chawla before disclosing the letter written by former
incumbent R Gopalaswami to the President regarding Chawla's
alleged "partisan" functioning.
Exercising his Right to Information, an activist S C
Agrawal had sought the copy of Gopalaswami's letter which was
rejected by the President's Secretariat saying its disclosure
would be an invasion of privacy and denied the same.
However, he argued that contents of the letter were
already in the media and hence there was no reason to claim
'invasion of privacy'.
Hearing the matter, Chief Information Commissioner
Wajahat Habibullah on November 9 upheld earlier decisions by
both the CPIO and Appellate Authority saying "the information
sought is third party and held in confidence by the
President."
The CIC directed the CPIO, President Secretariat to refer
the matter to the third party, Naveen Chawla, CEC to obtain
his opinion before disclosing the information.
The Commission, hearing another appeal by Agrawal related
to the letter of former President A P J Abdul Kalam to former
Prime Minister A B Vajpayee in 2004 expressing his displeasure
over some persons listed for the prestigious Padma Awards,
ordered to provide copy of file notings barring references to
individuals and discussion of their merits and demerits.
The Commission observed that disclosure of such
information would assuredly amount to invasion of privacy...
and directed the CPIO to provide copy of the notings of the
"impugned file deleting therefrom all references to
individuals and discussion of their merits and demerits."
Agarwal has sought complete file notings made at
Rashtrapati Bhavan by the former President A P J Abdul Kalam
on the subject.
He had submitted that the contents of this correspondence
have already appeared in the media. "The only consequence of
withholding the information by the President’s Secretariat
would mean that the public would be denied the means of
authenticating such reports," the RTI activist had said.
The President Secretariat had earlier given two last
pages of the letter but for the rest of correspondence, it had
said that it was held in fiduciary relationship and cannot be
given to the RTI applicant.
During the hearing, the Commission examined the file
notings and found that in the discussion the merit of
conferring award on various individuals has been discussed in
some detail and allowed disclosure of desired information
after removing the exempted details from it.
Bureau Report