Friends

My response to issues raised by Lawrence Sathiyaraj J, are as under:

1. Can a employee seek information under RTI to get information regarding his/her service matter from his / her employer?

Yes. In fact,this is the most frequent use of RTI as employees who are unable to find redressal of their grievances through the prevailing systems are resorting to demand of public records, to seek justice.

2. Can the information relating to a Quasi Judicial proceedings a against a person can be asked under RTI?

Yes. There nothing in section 8 of RTI Act which exempts the disclosure of such information. Section 8(h) is being often used to deny the information , but the counter-arguments would depend upon the facts of the case. Some of the issues are  (i) Whether revealing public records would "impede" the the investigations/ apprehension /prosecu tion. (ii) Whether the information is such that can be denied to the Parliament or State Legislature,  (iii) Whether the public interest in disclosure harms the protected interest and (iv) According to section 22, RTI Act has an over-riding effect and thereby the legal procedure prescribed for the quasi-judicial proceeding gets over-ridden by the RTI Act.

In any case, natural justice lies in disclosure of information that is being used against a person.

3. If a person is being professionally victimised by the public authority for seeking information under RTI what is the next step to be taken?

Complaint with CIC/ SIC can be lodged under section 18 of the RTI Act. One can also lodge complaint with the higher authorities, under the procedures laid down for the redressal of grievances. One can  seek other legal remedies, after getting copy of public records relating to professional victimisation/ harassment/etc, under the RTI Act.

In my humble opinion, frequent resort to RTI Act by the Government employees reflect upon the poor personnel management policies, unsatisfactory grievance redressal systems and frequent cases of high-handed harassment of senior officers of their employees. All public authorities where employees are resorting to RTI to resolve their personal problems, should review their personnel management policies. Section 4(2) makes it obligatory to provide information suo-moto to the employees so that they have minimum resort to RTI Act.

Dhirendra Krishna