A Few Facts of the case The petitioner, Kashinath Shetye, was working as a junior engineer in the Electricity Department. The respondent no. 4, Dinsh Vaghela, applied to the Public Information Officer to supply information in respect of the petitioner on the following Electricity Department counts:
The information was in regard to the number of days of paid, unpaid sick, earned and casual leaves enjoyed by the petitioner.
The Public Information Officer gave notice to the petitioner to show cause as to why the information sought should not be supplied. The petitioner filed reply contending that the information being personal, should not be supplied and demanding or supplying of such information, would be an invasion of his privacy. The Public Information Officer i.e., the Superintendent Engineer, refused to supply the information on the ground that the department is exempted from supplying the information as it falls under clause (j) of section 8(1) of Right to Information Act. The respondent preferred appeal before the Chief Engineer, who dismissed the appeal. The appeal was preferred by him before the Goa Information Commissioner, which allowed the appeal and set aside the orders of the authorities below and directed that the information be supplied as sought. Hence, the petitioner has come up in writ petition.
The learned Counsel for the petitioner submitted that the order is bad in law on two counts. (i) The information sought, is personal information and (ii) it invades the right of privacy and no larger public interest is involved.
The court noted:
The first thing that needs to be taken into consideration is that the petitioner is a public servant. When one becomes a public servant, every member of public gets a right to know about his working, his honesty, integrity and devotion to duty. In fact, nothing remains personal while as far as the discharging of duty. A public servant continues to be a public servant for all 24 hours. Therefore, any conduct /misconduct of a public servant even in private, ceases to be private. When, therefore, a member of a public, demands an information as to how many days leave were availed of by the public servant, such information though personal, has to be supplied and there is no question of privacy at all. Such supply of information, at the most, may disclose how sincere or insincere the public servant is in discharge of his duty and the public has a right to know.
“The next question is whether the applicant should be supplied the copies of the application at all. It was contended that the copies of the application should not be supplied for, they may contain the nature of the ailment and the applicant has no right to know about the ailment of the petitioner or his family. To my mind, what cannot be supplied is a medical record maintained by the family physician or a private hospital. To that extent, it is his right of privacy, it certainly, cannot be invaded. The application for leave is not a medical record at all. It, at the most, may contain ground on which leave was sought. It was contended that u/s. 8(1) (j), the information cannot be supplied. In this regard, it would be necessary to read proviso to that section. If the proviso is read, it is obvious that every citizen is entitled to have that information which the Parliament can have. It is not shown to me as to why the information as is sought, cannot be supplied to the Parliament. In fact, the Parliament has a right to know the ground for which a public servant has taken leave since his salary is paid from the public exchequer.”
In the circumstances, the court ruled that it does not find that the Information Commission committed any error in directing such information to be supplied. According to the court there was no substance in the writ petition, petition was dismissed.
[The High Court of Bombay at Goa: Writ petition No. 1 of 2009]
