CENTRAL INFORMATION COMMISSION
.....
F.No.CIC/AT/A/2008/00748
Dated, the 31st December, 2008
Appellant : Shri Ashok Kumar Lahiri
Respondents : Customs Department, Kolkata
This second-appeal was heard through videoconferencing on 24.11.2008.
Appellant and respondents both were present at NIC Studio at Kolkata.
Commission conducted the hearing from the CIC office at New Delhi.
2. The short-point for consideration in this appeal is whether the following
information requested by the appellant through his RTI-application dated
29.10.2007 be disclosed to the appellant. The query read as:-
“I seek information regarding the quantum of reward paid to the Officer
named one ‘Basu Dev Batabyal’ while posted at the S.I.B. Department of the
Custom House, Calcutta……Kindly provide the said information along with the
corresponding file / case numbers in the interest of the revenue.”
3. The reason put-forward for not disclosing this information to the appellant
is that it has the potential to compromise the security of the third-party, Shri Basu
Dev Batabyal, in respect of whom this information is solicited and that the
information so requested is the personal information of the third-party. Sections
of RTI Act in support of these conclusions are Section 8(1)(g) and Section 8(1)(j)
respectively.
4. Appellate Authority has overruled the CPIO’s contention that the officer
being employed under the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), which is an
organization exempted under Section 24 of the RTI Act, an information
pertaining to that officer is exempted from any disclosure obligation.
5. It is an admitted fact that the Department of Customs has a scheme in
place in which outstanding detection work of the officials were rewarded with
financial incentives which needed to be worked-out as per the existing guidelines
contained in the Scheme. The third-party in this case, Shri Basu Dev Batabyal
was accordingly given a reward for meritorious work in unearthing evasion of
the revenue payable to the State.
6. The point for consideration is whether the information related to any
reward money received by an officer of the Customs Department in pursuance of
a regular Scheme be allowed to be disclosed.
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7. Without getting into the aspect of the security and risk implications of
such disclosure, it is worthwhile to mention that all charges on the Consolidated
Fund of India should ordinarily be liable for disclosure, except when such
disclosure would attract any of the exemption-Sections of the RTI Act. In fact,
the Act provides for disclosure of all wage-related and compensation-related
information of all public employees (Section 4 of the Act). It should follow from
that that monetary rewards granted to individual employees of the public
authority should also be liable for disclosure, especially because this is a claim
on the budgetary resources of the State and in the scheme of the RTI Act all such
outgoes ought to be within the ambit of the Act for disclosure.
8. From that standpoint, there is no reason why the present requested
information should be barred from disclosure.
9. That brings to the second question whether the disclosure of the above
information should be exempt under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act.
10. Following from what has been stated in paragraph 8 above, an information
admittedly a public information will not become a personal or private
information simply because it pertains to an individual public employee.
By their very nature all payments, wages, allowances, and compensation-related
information had to be specific to the individual employees. But that cannot be
the reason for barring disclosure of information under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI
Act. In fact, in my view all this information including rewards and
compensations to individual employees given under Schemes launched by the
public authorities should naturally be brought under the ambit of Section 4 of the
RTI Act.
11. I, therefore, find myself unable to agree with the surmise that the reward
given to an employee by the public authority in pursuance of an existing Scheme
should be barred from disclosure as that information is supposed to be personal
to that employee.
12. This brings up the point which was initially referred by the above such
disclosure attracting Section 8(1)(g) of the RTI Act.
13. According to me, barring disclosure of information regarding how much
an employee receives from the public authority by way of compensation or
reward for outstanding work because the disclosure of such information might
expose the civil servant to avoidable risk, will be a far-fetched proposition.
It is not clear from what has been stated by the respondents as to how such
disclosure would expose the civil servant to risk and what would be the nature of
this risk. It would be incorrect to assume that there would be a risk simply from
the fact that a reward has been given to an employee for his outstanding work.
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14. Accepting this argument would go counter to the basic proposition that all
payments, compensation and reward-related information, which draw upon the
public authorities’ budgetary resources, should be liable for disclosure.
15. In view of the above, I am unable to agree with the findings of the
Appellate Authority that the requested information should not be disclosed under
Section 8(1)(g) or Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act.
16. It is seen that the third-party, Shri Basu Dev Batabyal is an officer of the
DRI, which is an organization listed in Second Schedule of RTI Act (Section 24).
CPIO, in his submission to the Commission dated 19.11.2008, has stated that the
official ⎯ third-party ⎯ being an employee of DRI has no bearing on the
processing of the present RTI-application. I agree with CPIO’s conclusion.
It is, therefore, directed that the CPIO shall collect the requested information
from the DRI and supply it to the complainant within 3 weeks of the receipt of
this order.
17. Appellant has raised certain additional queries in his first as well as
second-appeals. These do not merit a response as these were not originally
included in appellant’s RTI-application.
18. Appeal disposed of with the above directions.
19. Copy of this decision be sent to the parties.
( A.N. TIWARI )
INFORMATION COMMISSIONER
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