ORDER

1. The appellant filed an application under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) before the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO), Income Tax Office, Thane seeking following information:-

“Provide following information about my husband Mr. P.L.R Shenoy as per his PAN:-

a) Full Name of my husband.

b) My husband’s father’s name.

c) Date of Birth of my husband.

d) Full address of my husband.

e) Date of PAN Card generation.”

2. The CPIO responded on 30-10-2018. The appellant filed the first appeal dated 28-02-2019 which was disposed of by the first appellate authority on 05- 04-2019. Thereafter, she filed a second appeal u/Section 19(3) of the RTI Act before the Commission requesting to take appropriate legal action against the CPIO u/Section 20 of the RTI Act, 2005 and also to direct him to provide the sought for information.

Hearing:

3. The appellant, Smt. Pushpa Shenoy attended the hearing through video conferencing. Ms. Prema Philips, CPIO and Mr. Ramesh Jha, CPIO/DDIT participated in the hearing representing the respondent through audio-video conferencing. The written submissions are taken on record.

4. The appellant contended that she is the legally wedded wife of Mr. P.L.R Shenoy and therefore, she has every right to know his address as per the PAN data. She contended that the exemption u/Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, 2005 is not tenable in this case.

5. The respondent contended that the PAN data is held by the Income Tax Department in a fiduciary capacity and therefore, it cannot be provided to any other person except the PAN holder. In the instant case, the PAN holder has not given his consent for sharing the PAN details with the appellant. Therefore, they have claimed exemptions u/Section 8(1)(e) r/w Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, 2005 for denying the personal details of PAN data.

Decision:

6. With regards to the applicability of Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, 2005 regarding non-disclosure of PAN data which forms part of the income tax returns of an individual, this Commission refers to the judgment dated 03-10- 2012 of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in SLP(C) No. 27734 of 2012 titled as Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commission & ors., wherein, it has been held as under:-

“14. The details disclosed by a person in his income tax returns are "personal information" which stand exempted from disclosure under clause (j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act, unless involves a larger public interest and the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the Appellate Authority is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information.

7. The present matter wherein the appellant has sought the PAN details of her husband can be distinguished from the decision dated 15-05-2018 of the Division Bench of the Hon’ble High Court of Madhya Pradesh on the premise that in that matter the information was sought regarding an employee’s salary from the employer being a government department i.e. the BSNL which otherwise was obliged to disclose the remuneration of its employee in view of Section 4(1)(b)(x) of the RTI Act, 2005 and no direction was given by the Hon’ble High Court of Madhya Pradesh to disclose the details of the Income Tax Returns of the employee. Moreover, the decision of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in Girish Ramachandra Deshpande (supra) was only distinguished with regard to the limited point that wife was entitled to know the remuneration details of her husband. No other opinion/decision was conveyed regarding other personal information. Therefore, this Commission does not agree with the contentions put forth by the appellant for disclosure of PAN details of her husband.

8. Henceforth, the legal issue to be decided herein is whether the appellant claiming to be the legally wedded wife of Mr. P.L.R Shenoy is entitled to seek details of his income tax returns i.e. PAN data. In this regard, it is apt to mention the decision dated 01-07