The relationship of the RTI with the judiciary has been fraught from the beginning. Since the RTI Act conferred powers on the chief justice of the Supreme Court of India and the chief justices of high courts of states for carrying out its provisions, all these courts framed their own rules.
On November 13, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court passed its order in the Subhash Agarwal matter, bringing a closure to cases pending resolution for nearly 10 years. Has Subhash Agarwal got the information he had sought from the Supreme Court? Not yet. Will he get it soon? Not very likely, certainly not the entire information he wanted. The five-judge Supreme Court bench recently disposed of the civil appeals its own registry had filed before it. In the process, the bench, in a dissertation length order, has delved deep into the concepts of fiduciary relationship, public interest, privacy, confidentiality and independence of judiciary and, in conclusion, cast an onerous duty on its Central Public Information Officer to decide on disclosure of the information taking into account the observations of the court.
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