Deep Public School v. Central Information Commission

1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment?

2. To be referred to the Reporter or not ?

3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest ? O R D E R

1. Deep Public School has filed the present writ petition impugning order of the Information Commissioner dated 7th November, 2008. By the said order, Director of Education, Government of NCT of Delhi has been directed to collect information from the petitioner and furnish the same to the information seeker, Ms. Sobha Upadhayay, respondent No. 4 herein. Ms. Sobha Upadhayay is a teacher in the petitioner school, who is presently under suspension and is facing enquiry proceedings. 2009:DHC:3893 W.P. (C) 8363/2008 Page 2

2. The impugned order dated 7th November, 2008 suffers from two infirmities. Firstly, it is a non-speaking order and secondly the impugned order was passed without notice to the third parties, i.e. the petitioner and Ms. Sangeeta Paul, Principal of the petitioner school about whom certain information was sought by the respondent No. 4. On these two grounds, the impugned order cannot be sustained and has to be set aside. Reference in this regard can be made to Sections 11 and 19(4) of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (hereinafter referred to as the Act, for short). Normally, in such circumstances, the matter is required to be remanded back to the Information Commissioner for fresh adjudication in accordance with law. However, in the present case, learned counsel for the petitioner has drawn my attention to the application filed by Ms. Sobha Upadhyay dated 21st August, 2007, wherein the following information and details were asked for:-

3. Not satisfied with the information furnished by the Public Information Officer and the first appellate authority, the respondent No. 4, Ms. Sobha Upadhyay had filed a second appeal before the Central Information Commission. The Central Information Commission dismissed the said appeal filed by the respondent No. 4 vide order dated 27th March, 2008 recording as under:-

6. On appeal, the first appellate authority directed furnishing of W.P. (C) 8363/2008 Page 5 complete information to the respondent No. 4. However, respondent NO. 4 was not satisfied and filed a second appeal before the Information Commissioner. The appeal filed before the Information Commissioner has been allowed by order dated 7th November, 2008. As noted above, the Information Commissioner has allowed the appeal without giving any reasons and has merely stated that the exemption claimed under Section 8(1)(j) is only a ploy to deny the information. This does not meet the requirement of the Section, the Act and principle of administrative law, i.e., giving of reasons. It is also obvious that the respondent No. 4 had concealed the fact that she had earlier filed an application asking for similar and identical information and the same was rejected by the order dated 27th March, 2008 passed by the Information Commissioner and the said order was accepted by the respondent No. 4. There was concealment of facts by the respondent No. 4, which is unfortunate.

7. During the course of hearing of the present petition, learned counsel for the petitioner has stated that they have already furnished information in form of minutes of the DPC in which Ms. Sangeeta Paul was selected as the Principal. She further states that they have already provided statement of accounts with regard to salary payable to the respondent NO. 4. Learned counsel for the petitioner further states that they shall furnish details of salary paid to the respondent No. 4 along with photocopies of the salary registers/vouchers for payment of salary for the last ten years W.P. (C) 8363/2008 Page 6 within a period of fifteen days. The statement made by the counsel for the petitioner is taken on record and the petitioner will be bound by the said statement. The said details will be furnished and sent to respondent No. 4 by registered post within a period of fifteen days from today. The writ petition is accordingly allowed and the order dated 7th November, 2008 is set aside. It is also clarified that penalty proceedings are quashed.