JUDGMENT

Swatanter Kumar, J.-Leave granted.

2. The present appeal is directed against the judgment dated 18th December, 2008 of the High Court of Bombay at Aurangabad vide which the High Court declined to interfere with the order dated 26th February, 2008 passed by the State Information Commissioner under the provisions of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (for short ‘the Act’).

3. We may notice the facts in brief giving rise to the present appeal. One Shri Ram Narayan, respondent No.2, a political person belonging to the Nationalist Congress Party, Nanded filed an application on 3rd January, 2007, before the appellant who was a nominated authority under Section 5 of the Act and was responsible for providing the information sought by the applicants. This application was moved under Section 6(1) of the Act.

4. In the application, the said respondent No.2 sought the following information:

“a. The persons those who are appointed/selected through a reservation category, their names, when they have appointed on the said post. b. When they have joined the said post. c. The report of the Caste Verification Committee of the persons those who are/were selected from the reserved category. d. The persons whose caste certificate is/was forwarded for the verification to the caste verification committee after due date. Whether any action is taken against those persons? If any action is taken, then the detail information should be given within 30 days.”

5. The appellant, at the relevant time, was working as Superintendent in the State Excise Department and was designated as the Public Information Officer. Thus, he was discharging the functions required under the provisions of the Act. After receiving the application from Respondent No.2, the appellant forwarded the application to the concerned Department for collecting the information. Vide letter dated 19th January, 2007, the appellant had informed respondent No.2 that action on his application has been taken and the information asked for has been called from the concerned department and as and when the information is received, the application could be answered accordingly. As respondent No.2 did not receive the information in furtherance to his application dated 3rd January, 2007, he filed an appeal within the prescribed period before the Collector, Nanded on 1st March, 2007, under Section 19(1) of the Act. In the appeal, respondent No.2 sought the information for which he had submitted the application. This appeal was forwarded to the office of the appellant along with the application given by respondent No.2. No hearing was conducted by the office of the Collector at Nanded. Vide letter dated 11th April, 2007, the then Superintendent, State Excise, Nanded, also designated as Public Information Officer, further wrote to respondent No.2 that since he had not mentioned the period for which the information is sought, it was not possible to supply the information and requested him to furnish the period for which such information was required. The letter dated 11th April, 2007 reads as under :

“... you have not mentioned the period of the information which is sought by you. Therefore, it is not possible to supply the information. Therefore, you should mention the period of information in your application so that it will be convenient to supply the information.”

6. As already noticed there was no hearing before the Collector and the appeal before the Collector had not been decided. It is the case of the appellant that the communication from the Collector's office dated 4th March, 2007 had not been received in the office of the appellant. Despite issuance of the letter dated 11th April, 2007, no information was received from respondent No.2 and, thus, the information could not be furnished by the appellant. On 4th April, 2007, the appellant was transferred from Nanded to Akola District and thus was not responsible for performance of the functions of the post that he was earlier holding at