Mehinder Singh Sullar, J.

1. Tersenessly, the facts, which require to be noticed for a limited purpose of deciding the core controversy, involved in the instant writ petition and emanating from the record, are that one Khushi Ram (respondent No.2) moved an application dated 27.1.2009 (Annexure P1) to the Central Public Information Officer (for brevity "the CPIO"), seeking the information mentioned therein and here-in-below, pertaining to one M/s Rajesh Gas Service, an authorized distributor of LPG, invoking the provisions of The Right to Information Act, 2005 (hereinafter to be referred as "the Act"). The CPIO did not supply the complete information, which necessitated him (respondent No.2) to prefer first appeal, which was dismissed as well, by the First Appellate Authority (for short "the FAA") (respondent No.3), by virtue of order dated 16.3.2009 (Annexure P4)

2. Aggrieved by the action of not supplying the information by the CPIO and FAA, respondent No.2 filed the appeal (Annexure P5) before the Central Information Commission (for brevity "the CIC"), which was partly accepted by way of order dated 23.7.2009 (Annexure P8).

3. The petitioner-Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (for short "the petitioner- Corporation") had earlier challenged the order (Annexure P8), by virtue of Civil Writ Petition No. 14163 of 2009, which came to be disposed of by this Court. The order (Annexure P8) was set aside and the matter was referred back for its re-adjudication by the CIC, after passing a reasoned order, vide order dated 1.9.2010 (Annexure P10).

4. In this manner, the appeal of respondent No.2 was again heard by the CIC, which was accepted, by means of impugned order dated 4.1.2011 (Annexure P13), the operative part of which is as under:-

"Coming to the second issue, namely, whether the list of consumers can be treated as information in the nature of commercial confidence, we think that, in this particular case, it cannot be so considered. In Normal circumstances, the list of clients or consumers of any commercial entity is to be considered as commercial confidence. However, in this case, the consumers happen to be those who are the beneficiaries of subsidized cooking gas being provided by the HPCL. It is disingenuous to argue that the subsidy in the case of the LPG being distributed through the public sector oil companies is not given by the oil companies themselves but by the Central Government through an administered price mechanism. The Respondent had clearly admitted that the price at which gas was being supplied to both the domestic and commercial consumers was fixed by the Central Government and involved some amount of subsidy. Section 4(l)(b)(xiii) of the Right to Information (RTI) Act mandates the public authority to disclose proactively the particulars of the recipients of concessions et cetera. Obviously, this is to ensure that all information regarding any subsidy or concession given by the government is widely known so that any possibility of selecting wrong beneficiaries or diverting scarce and costly resources meant for certain classes of people can be prevented. Thus, when the HPCL, as a public authority, is itself required by jaw to publish the details of all such recipients, to treat the list of recipients, in this case, the consumers of subsidized cooking gas, as commercial confidence goes totally counter to the letter and spirit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Transparency demands that such information is routinely published in the public domain so that no one needs to approach any CPIO for seeking the information. Once such information is placed in the public domain, diversion of scarce cooking gas meant for domestic consumers and provided at a great cost to the nation will become difficult as the public would know about both classes of beneficiaries in advance and highlight any such diversion noticed by them. Keeping this information secret and confidential is not at all in the public interest no