Hon’ble Pradeep Kant, J.—Following two questions arise for determination in the present writ petition :

(1) Whether the information disclosing the names of the persons including address and amount, who have received more than Rs. 1 lac from the Chief Minister Discretionary Fund, can be given to the information seeker or it is an information, which stands exempted under Section 8 (j) of the Right to Information Act.

(2) Whether the Chief Information Commissioner while considering the complaints under Section 18 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 is competent only to award the prescribed punishment, in case of failure of information being given as per the provisions of the Act or while dealing with the said complaints, any direction can also be issued for furnishing the information which has not been provided, though it is not found to be exempted under the provisions of the Act.

2. Right to Information Act, 2005 (referred to as the ‘RTI Act’) enacted by the Parliament, received assent of the President on 15.6.2005, and which came into force w.e.f. 12.10.2005, is relatively a new legislation and, therefore, is having its teething problem giving rise to various issues, which require consideration by the Court.

3. Needless to mention that the Act is not meant for creating a new type of litigation or a new forum of litigation between the information seeker and the information giver, but may be that some of the informations asked for, be inconvenient to the persons to whom it relates and, therefore, every effort would be made to refuse divulgence of such an information and for that matter either to refuse the information by delaying the process or passing a specific order of refusal, may be some time by taking shelter under the provisions of Sections 8 and 9 of the Act, which are the exemption clauses.

4. The information covered by the aforesaid provisions is either completely exempted or it has been given limited protection i.e. though the information is otherwise exempted but can be disclosed on the satisfaction of the Public Information Officer, if he is satisfied that the disclosure of such an information is in larger public interest.

Our Constitution establishes a democratic republic. Democracy requires an informed citizenry and transparency of information which are vital to its functioning and also to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed. The revelation of information in actual practice is likely to conflict with other public interests including efficient operations of the Governments, optimum use of limited fiscal resources and the preservation of confidentiality of sensitive information and, therefore, with a view to harmonise these conflicting interests while preserving the paramountcy of the democratic ideal, the Parliament enacted the Act of 2005 to provide for furnishing certain information to citizens who desire to have it.

5. RTI Act in fact, has been enacted to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens to secure access to information under the control of public authorities, in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority, the constitution of a Central Information Commission and State Information Commissions and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

6. ‘Right to Information’ is the right to obtain information from any public authority by means of, (i) inspection, taking of extracts and notes; (ii) certified copies of any records of such public authority; (iii) diskettes, floppies or in any other electronic mode or through printouts where such information is stored in a computer or in any other device.

7. Information in this context means any material in any form relating to the administration, operations or decisions of a public authority.

8. The Act provides for making information held by executive agencies of the State available to the public un