Central Information Commission
Appeal No.CIC/PB/A/2008/906-SM dated 19.11.2007
Right to Information Act-2005-Under Section (19)
Dated: 13 July 2009
Name of the Appellant : Smt. Pratibha Singhal,
5-G-1, RC Vyas Colony,
Bhilwara, Rajasthan.
Name of the Public Authority : CPIO, Bank of Baroda,
Regional Office, Ajmer Region,
Captain Durga prasad Chaudhary Marg,
Vaishali Nagar, Ajmer - 305 004.
The Appellant was present in person.
On behalf of the Respondent, the following were present:-
(i) Shri B.B. Garg, General Manager & FAA
(ii) Shri Alwyn Games, Chief Manager
(iii) Shri Anil Kumar Garg, Sr. Manager
The case in brief is as under.
2. The Appellant had, in two different applications addressed to the CPIO
both dated 19 September 2007, requested for copies of the enquiry report of
Smt Mithilesh Chauhan and Anita Chakraborty who had conducted the enquiry
on her complaint against Sri KD Kanwar. The CPIO replied on 12 October 2007
and denied the information as exempt under Section 8(1) (j) of the Right to
Information (RTI) Act. Not satisfied with this reply, the Appellant preferred an
appeal before the Appellate Authority on 5 December 2007. The Appellate
Authority disposed off or appeal in his order dated 27 December 2007 and
upheld the decision of the CPIO in not disclosing the information. It is against
this order that she has come to the CIC in second appeal.
3. Both the parties were present during the hearing and made their
submissions. While the Appellant was keen to get the copies of the enquiry
reports along with the copies of the statements of witnesses, the Respondent
argued that these enquiries had been conducted in confidence and statements
had been recorded also in confidence and the disclosure of individual
statements of witnesses would amount to disclosure of personal information
given in confidence and might cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of
CIC/PB/A/2008/906-SM
those individuals. The Respondent produced copies of those enquiry reports
including the statements of individual witnesses for our perusal. After carefully
examining the reports and the statements enclosed there with, we feel that,
by and large, the copies of the enquiry reports could be disclosed to the
Appellant but without the statements of individual witnesses given in
confidence. Since these enquiries had been conducted confidentially and
statements of witnesses recorded in confidence, disclosure of the copies of the
statements would expose those individuals and would cause unwarranted
invasion of their privacy. Such information, without any relationship to any
public activity interest, is exempt from disclosure under Section 8(1) (j) of the
Right to Information (RTI) Act.
4. In view of the above, we direct the CPIO to provide to the Appellant
within 10 working days from the receipt of this order the complete copy of the
enquiry report of Smt Mithilesh Chauhan and the copy of the enquiry report of
Anita Chakraborty from page 8 onwards excluding the copies of the statements
of individual witnesses recorded by the enquiry officers. It is to be noted that
all the pages of the latter enquiry report are not being allowed to be disclosed
as those pages contain extensive extracts from the statements of individual
witnesses including their names recorded in connection with this enquiry and
the disclosure of those pages of the report would amount to disclosure of the
statements which we have held not to be disclosed for reasons stated above.
5. With the above directions, this appeal is disposed of.
6. Copies of this order be given free of cost to the parties.
(Satyananda Mishra)
Information Commissioner
Authenticated true copy. Additional copies of orders shall be supplied against
application and payment of the charges prescribed under the Act to the CPIO of this
Commission.
(Vijay Bhalla)
Assistant Registrar
CIC/PB/A/2008/906-SM