Delhi High Court criticised the Legislative Department for filing an unnecessary Writ Petition against the Order of Central Information Commission (of M Sridhar Acharyulu, CIC) directing the Government to update and upload all the latest amended bare Acts, to examine the functionality of its e-mail ID and develop an appropriate RTI filing mechanism. Justice Manmohan of Delhi High Court directed Legislative Department to recover Rs.10,000/- which was awarded as compensation by CIC, from the salary of the Government officials who authorized the filing of this unwarranted writ petition and pay the same to the Library. Vansh Sharad Gupta, a student of NLSUI, had filed this RTI application through e-mail, to know the e-mail ID of CPIO, Legislative department. He could not access the text of Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1972 from the website, though he could find the Bare Act. It was impossible to read as that PDF of Bare Act was not formatted and each sentence was intercepted by trash. He appealed to provide the bare Acts (enactments without commentary) in a readable PDF format. The Commission directed the Department to inform the complainant as to what action had been taken including details of the programme of updation, the possible date of its completion, expenditure involved, personnel employed etc. CIC had also directed the petitioner to pay Rs.10,000/- to the library of University, for causing loss of time of several law students, more specifically of the appellant, not providing easy access to email, or not making email ids easily available, delaying the information etc, within one month. The Department chose to challenge this order in Delhi High Court. In the writ petition, Legislation department contended that student never filed an RTI application in the prescribed form with the requisite fee and did not even file first appeal. Rejecting this petition Justice Manmohan held; “This Court is not an appellate Court of the CIC. Technical and procedural arguments cannot be allowed to come in the way of substantial justice. The directions given by the CIC in the impugned order are not only fair and reasonable but also promote the concept of rule of law. It is unfortunate that the petitioner did not take the initiative on its own to upload the latest amended bare Acts. Public can be expected to follow the law only if law is easily accessible ‘at the click of a button’. HC said: “In fact, as rightly pointed out by the CIC, the RTI Act itself mandates the Government to place the texts of enactments in public domain. This Court also took judicial notice of the fact that in challenging the imposition of costs of Rs.10,000/-, the Government of India would have spent more money in filing the present writ petition. Consequently, this Court is of the view that the costs of Rs.10,000/- which was directed to be paid by the CIC, should be recovered from the salary of the Government officials who authorized the filing of the present writ petition”.
Some learning from the case:
1. It is the duty of law ministry to upload updated enactments for people.
2. Department has to change their systems in response to the issues raised in RTI requests.
3. People have right to know law in their own language
4. It is the duty of Law Ministry to disclose the law, which they want people to follow.
5. Public Authority has to pay compensation for violation of sections 4 and 3
6. State should not be a cantankerous litigant
7. There is no routine appeal available from decision of Information Commission
