RAJIV SAHAI ENDLAW A.K. SIKRI (ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE)

1. The appellant is seeking information under Right to Information Act, 2005 (hereinafter referred to as „the RTI Act?), which has been denied to him by all the Authorities below including the learned Single Judge of this Court. To put it crisply, at this stage itself, the appellant wants information about some adverse entries allegedly made in the Annual Confidential Report of Ms. Jyoti Balasundram, Member/CESTAT by the President of the CESTAT for the year 2000-01 and follow-up action thereupon. The CPIO of CESTAT refused to divulge any information on the ground that it was exempted under Section 8(1)(i) of the RTI Act.

2. The writ petition filed before the learned Single Judge has been decided vide orders dated 08.12.2011 whereby the learned Single Judge held that the information sought by the appellant herein is “the third party information” wherein the third party may plead a „privacy? defence and the proper question would be as to whether divulging of such an information is in the public interest or not. Thus, the matter has been remitted back to the Chief Information Commissioner to consider this issue after following the procedure prescribed in Section 11 of the RTI Act and then decide the same. The learned Single Judge has relied upon the Division Bench judgment of this Court in the case of Arvind Kejriwal Vs. CPIO, AIR 2010 Delhi 216 for taking the aforesaid course of action.

3. Undeterred, the appellant has filed the instant intra-Court appeal questioning the manner in which the writ petition is disposed of as the appellant pleads that without further ado he is entitled to information sought for. Though indicated above in brief, we may reiterate that as per the appellant, there was certain complaints qua corruption against Ms. Jyoti Balasundaram, Member/CESTAT. After examining this complaint, the then President of CESTAT who was former Chief Justice of High Court made certain adverse entries in the ACR of the said Member which pertained to the year 2000-01. According to the appellant, on the basis of the said ACR, Department of Revenue in the Ministry of Finance opened another file with the subject “follow up action on the integrity in the ACR for the year 2000-01 in respect of Ms. Jyoti Balasundaram, Member (Tech), CESTAT.” Ultimately, this file was closed without taking any proper action. The appellant on this premise wanted inspection of the file as well as the copies of the Note Sheets and correspondence. He, thus, filed an application under RTI Act on 07.10.2009 seeking information and copies of the Note Sheets and correspondence pages of PLAINTIFF File No.27/3/2002-AD.IC.

4. On 15.10.2009, the CPIO of CESTAT informed the appellant that the file contained analysis of the ACR of the said Member and claimed it to be exempted under Section 8(1)(i) of the RTI Act. The first Appellate Authority rejected the appeal on the same ground on 18.12.2009. Further appeal before the CIC met the same fate as the CIC also held that ACR grades could be disclosed only to the person to whom it relates except in the exceptional circumstances. In the brief order of the CIC, following portion is relevant and is therefore extracted herein:

“5. It is not in doubt that the file referred to by the appellant related to the Annual Confidential Record of a third-party, Ms. Jyoti Balasundaram and was specific to substantiation by the Reporting Officer of the comments made in her ACRs about the third-party?s integrity. Therefore, appellant?s plea that the matter was about a public servant?s integrity per se is not valid. The ACR examines all aspects of the performance and the personality of a public servant – integrity being one of them. An examination of the aspect of integrity as part of the CR cannot, therefore, be equated with the vigilance enquiry against a public servant. Appellant was in error in equating the two.

6. It has been the consistent position of this Commission that A