Central Information Commission (CIC): Information Commissioner, Suresh Chandra, partly allowed a second appeal filed before him in an issue related to non-receipt of the information raised by the appellant through his RTI application.
The appellant filed an application on 25-08-2015 under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) before the respondent-Central Public Information Officer (CPIO), Andhra Bank, Jaipur seeking information under twenty-five points related to tender for the service of the generator in the bank, to which CPIO replied on 24-09-2015. The appellant being dissatisfied with the response, preferred the First Appeal but the First Appellate Authority did not pass any order. Aggrieved thereby, the appellant filed a Second Appeal dated 16-12-2015, before the State Information Commission (SIC), Jaipur which was transferred to this Commission on 12-01-2017 for consideration.
The appellant contended that the reply given by the respondent was unsatisfactory and therefore requested the Commission to direct him to provide complete pointwise information and to take the necessary action as per Section 20 of the RTI Act. The respondent submitted that he had taken the facility of the generator from a person, other than the appellant, by following due procedure and the appellant’s agreement was terminated as per the terms of the agreement, aggrieved by which, the appellant filed the subject RTI.
The Commission in its order noted that most of the information sought by the appellant was in the form of queries which did not qualify for ‘information’ as defined under Section 2 (f) of the RTI Act. The Commission found that the reply given by CPIO was ‘evasive’, hence it directed the respondent to provide the information sought by the appellant on points 2, 3, 9, 13, 18, 19, 20 23 and 24 of his RTI application within 10 days from the date of receipt of the order.[Rajendra Sharma v. CPIO, Andhra Bank, 2019 SCC OnLine CIC 299, Order dated 03-05-2019]
