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Supreme Court on disclosure of medical expenses of Judges The Supreme Court has dismissed the CIC-verdict allowing disclosure of medical-expenses of individual judges. Significantly, it was specifically mentioned in the referred RTI petition that only consolidated annual amount of total medical expenses of an individual judge was required without any supporting documents like medical-bills which directly or indirectly could reveal the disease of the concerned judge. The Supreme Court verdict will have far-reaching consequence when other public authorities will also cite the Supreme Court verdict for not providing similar information about others.
It is noteworthy that an RTI response had revealed medical allowance claimed by a member of fourth Delhi Legislative Assembly Vipin Sharma till October 2013 was of Rs. 1,31,93,055. There are reports of large-scale misuse of medical-reimbursement by those entitled to claim from public-exchequers. In a country where commoners do not have even basic medical facilities, rules should be amended so that entitled ones may get free medical-facilities only in government hospitals and dispensaries may be at priority level. Another alternative can be government providing free medical facilities to entitled ones if they wish treatment at private institutions. It will prevent frauds in medical claims because insurance companies pass medical claims.
In the meanwhile, it is suggested that Union Government should immediately legislate for compulsorily putting all annual medical-reimbursements of individuals from public-exchequers on website. However, it may be made clear that only medical expenses may be in public domain without giving any right to citizens to ask for supporting documents of any kind. Earlier resistance was there even in disclosing travel-details as ‘personal’ details. But ultimately it had to be done through a circular from the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT).
Note: The Supreme Court recently underscored the need to bring accountability and transparency in the functioning of political parties. The Supreme Court sought a response from the Centre and Election Commission on why they should not be brought within the ambit of Right to Information Act. A bench of Chief Justice H. L. Dattu and Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy also issued notice to all six national parties – BJP, Congress, BSP, CPI, CPM and NCP – seeking their stand on why they should not be declared public authorities to be amenable to the transparency law. It granted them six weeks to file their replies.
However, when it comes to itself, the Supreme Court ruled that it is outside purview of RTI and exempted from providing information.
