J U D G M E N T

TUSHAR RAO GEDELA, J.

1. Present appeal has been preferred under Clause X of the Letters Patent Act, 1866 seeking setting aside of the impugned judgment dated 3rd May, 2024 whereby the learned Single Judge had dismissed the writ petition being W.P.(C) 2210/2020 titled “Kamal Bhasin vs. Central Public Information Office & Anr.” filed by the appellant.

2. The case of the appellant is that an application was filed under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (hereinafter referred to as the “RTI Act”) on 24th June, 2014 with the Public Information Officer of the Power Finance Corporation Limited stating that the Corporation has witnessed manifold increase in the strength of its manpower over the last five years which was attributed to its massive recruitment of Executives at the induction levels and the following information was sought:-

“(i) Certified Copy of the Recruitment Policy on the executives (ii) Certified Copy of the Manpower Requirement Budget for executives (iii) A total number of executives at the induction level have been recruited during the last 5 years (i.e. from the year 2010 to 2015) with detailing their Name, Qualifications, Name of the Passing Institute/university and their present posting in the Corporation.”

3. Vide its reply dated 10th July, 2015, the CPIO, Power Finance Corporation Limited had provided the information as sought in points (i) and (ii) of the RTI application of the appellant. It is stated that with regard to point (iii), some information was provided with respect to names and present postings as well as present designations of the Executives, alongwith a comment which said “Compiling individual Corporation qualifications and the names of passing Institute/University from the different individual files of candidates would disproportionately divert the resources of PFC, therefore information is exempted from being provided under Section 7(9) of the RTI Act, 2005.”.

4. Being aggrieved, the appellant filed an appeal under the RTI Act, which was dismissed by the Appellate Authority vide order dated 28th August, 2015. Thereafter, the appellant filed the second appeal before the Central Information Commissioner (hereinafter referred to as “the CIC”). The same was disposed of vide order dated 22nd June, 2017 holding that the information as sought by the appellant pertaining to the names of the Universities/Colleges from which the Executives had passed out relates to personal information of third parties, the disclosure of which would not serve any larger public interest, hence is exempted under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, 2005. However, the Commission passed directions to provide the information to the appellant relating to educational qualification of the Executives who had been recruited at the induction level from the year 2010 to 2015 as well as the certified copy of the Manpower Requirement Budget for the Executives as approved by the Competent Authority.

5. Though the aforesaid directions were complied with, however, not being satisfied, another appeal was filed by the appellant against the purported non-compliance of the order dated 22nd June, 2017. This appeal was rejected by the CIC vide order dated 1st November, 2019 on the ground that the order dated 22nd June, 2017 has been complied with.

6. Thereafter, the appellant filed the underlying writ petition which was dismissed by the learned Single Judge vide the impugned judgement dated 3rd May, 2024, constraining the appellant to file the present appeal. 7. Appellant appeared in person and submitted that the denial of disclosure of information as sought by him in his application is contrary to the provisions of the RTI Act. He submitted that though the information as sought by the appellant in points (i) and (ii) were furnished to him, yet the information sought in point (iii) was only partly furnished. He stated that even at the first instance, the information sought in point (ii) was furnished in a vague manner. It was only upon