Twenty-Six Days Without a Written Reply
On 1 Baisakh a citizen filed a written request at your ward office asking for three things: (i) copies of the minutes and decisions of the ward committee that formed a user committee for a Rs 42,00,000 road project, (ii) the project's expenditure details and the names of that committee's members, and (iii) the salary details and citizenship number of a ward employee with whom he has a personal land dispute. Your ward has not designated an information officer. The request was received by a peon and acknowledged only orally. Twenty-six days have now passed. The ward chair says all three items must wait until the final audit report is issued, and that item (iii) is 'strictly personal' and should be refused outright. The applicant has now written again, asking what has happened to his request.
1. For each of the three items, decide whether it must be disclosed, refused, or partially disclosed, and give the reasoning.
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(i) and (ii) - disclose. Minutes of a ward committee that allocates public money, and the expenditure and membership of a user committee handling Rs 42,00,000, are public information under the Right to Information Act 2064. The Act places a duty on public bodies to disclose such information proactively, and the requester does not have to give a reason for asking. A pending audit is not a legal ground for withholding: the right attaches to information held at the time of the request. Give what exists, and note only that the audit is in progress if that is a fact.
(iii) - partial disclosure. Split personal data from official data. The employee's designation, level and the salary drawn from the public fund are part of public accountability and can be disclosed, particularly where his conduct touches the requester's dispute. His citizenship number, home address, phone and family details are personal information protected under the right to privacy (Right to Privacy Act 2075) and are normally withheld unless public interest clearly outweighs that protection. Do not refuse the whole request: issue a redacted copy and state in writing, item by item, what was withheld and under which provision. That is what makes the refusal testable on appeal.
2. What procedural steps should the office have taken, what are the consequences of the 26-day delay, and what remedy would you advise the applicant to pursue?
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What was required: designate an information officer in writing and display the name at the counter; enter the request in an information register with date and time; acknowledge receipt in writing; and decide within 15 days, extendable by a further 15 days only on a valid ground recorded in writing and communicated to the applicant. None of this was done, and an oral acknowledgement is not an acknowledgement.
Consequence: the office has defaulted on the statutory deadline, which in practice is treated as a deemed refusal; the pending audit explanation will not cure it, because it was never communicated in writing.
Remedy to advise: a first appeal to the head of the concerned body within seven days of the expiry of the deadline, and a second appeal to the National Information Commission within thirty-five days of that decision. Both windows have technically run here; advise him to file the first appeal with a written request for condonation of delay, attaching his original request and noting that no written communication was ever issued, and to proceed to the Commission if the ward does not respond. The Commission can order disclosure and may also proceed against the responsible officer. Separately, the ward should reply now with full disclosure on (i) and (ii) and a redacted answer on (iii), and record why the delay happened.
3. Does the applicant's personal motive in item (iii) change your answer, and how would you frame the public-interest test in the file?
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Motive does not change the classification of the information, but it does affect how the balancing exercise on personal data is recorded. Under the Act the applicant need not give a reason, and a personal dispute does not convert public information into private information. What it does mean is that the file must show that the public-interest test was applied consciously, because the risk here is misuse of citizenship and address data rather than legitimate accountability.
Framing for the file: (a) what exactly is asked for; (b) whether each element is official or personal; (c) the harm that disclosure of the personal elements could cause to the employee and his family; (d) the public interest in the salary and designation - it is a payment from public money and the requester has an arguable grievance; (e) why redaction, rather than refusal, satisfies both.
Then issue a written decision under the information officer's signature: disclose designation, level and gross salary; withhold citizenship number and address; cite the provision relied on; and state the appeal route and the deadlines on the face of the letter. If the ward later receives a broader request from a media outlet or a citizen's group, apply the same test afresh - do not simply reuse this decision, because the public-interest balance may differ.