Cancel all anti-RTI announcements, CIC tells RBI

Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, November 17

The Central Information Commission (CIC) has asked the RBI to cancel all its anti-RTI announcements and replace them with RTI-compliant ones honouring its directions and the Supreme Court's verdict as soon as possible.

Invoking its duties and powers under Section 19(8) of RTI Act, the CIC "strongly" recommended immediate correction and an appropriate action against this RBI declared anti-RTI policy and asked the RBI to file a compliance report in this regard.

It also directed the RBI's RTI wing to revise, reform their section 4 disclosures and up date from time to time as per RTI Act, DoPT guidelines and order of Supreme Court.

"If RBI does not respect the orders of SC and denies the citizens Right to information, it will result in perpetuation of financial regime of secrecy that is potential enough to facilitate financial frauds and allow fraudulent rich and influential business persons to flee the country, as witnessed in recent times," Central Information Commissioner M. Sridhar Acharyulu said in his order.

The order came on an appeal filed by Sandeep Singh Jadoun who had sought information about wilful defaulters of bank loans of Rs 50 crore and above, with or without guarantees, the names of guarantors, details of sanction of loans, default and details of NPA accounts etc.

He also wanted to know the cost and investment of the projects for employment generating schemes initiated by the Central government between 2005 and 2018 along with the list of failed projects and projects which only existed on paper and were never introduced on the floor, with which the Ministry of Labour and Employment is concerned. He was denied information by the RBI and the ministry concerned.

On his appeal, the Commission had on November 2 issued several directions to the RBI on disclosure of names of willful defaulters, said, "Most of the unhealthy financial trends could be attributed directly to the practice of secrecy founded in pre-Independence British legislations ignoring the recent reforms for good governance."

The Commission had on November 2 held that there was no merit in hiding the names of, details and action against wilful defaulters of big bad loans worth hundreds of crores of rupees.

It had directed the RBI shall disclose the bad debt details of defaulters worth more than Rs 1,000 crore at the beginning, of Rs 500 crore or less at later stage within five days and collect such information from the banks in due course to update their voluntary disclosures from time to time as a practice under Section 4(1)(b) of RTI Act.

"The Commission would like to remind RBI that they have a duty to file with CIC, the reports of compliance of orders of CIC in all cases referred in RBI vs Jayantilal N Mistry, along with acknowledgments from the applicants for such information as soon as possible but not beyond 45 days from the date of receipt of this order," read its November 16 order.

On November 2, the CIC had directed the Central Public Information Officers of the RBI, the PMO and office of the Finance Minister to explain the action taken on the alerting letter written by Former Governor of RBI Raghuram Rajan on February 5, 2015, before November 16, 2018.

The CIC on November 16 said the PMO should not consider the RTI requestors as litigants or disputants, and that their office as an adversary to those requestors, noting that as a public servant in a representative government, the PMO has a duty to report to the sovereign, i.e., the members of the public.

"The RTI Act provided that even the CPIO can transfer the RTI request to other public authority for furnishing information. The CPIO of PMO transfers many RTI requests to other public authorities in routine. They cannot say that the IC cannot ask the other public authority to furnish information. This is wholly untenable contention," it said.