Uttaranchal High Court: Alok Singh, J. dismissed a writ petition filed by Sahak Nagar Adhikari, who was Public Information Officer under Right to Information Act, 2005.
The petitioner contended that, a show cause notice was issued upon him which sought an explanation as to why a penalty should not be imposed upon him for providing delayed information. He gave a brief reply of the said notice and administered information to the said officer. Thereafter, State Information Commissioner adjudged the matter and imposed a penalty of Rs 25,000 for delayed reply to the notice. He was aggrieved by the said order of the officer and therefore sought justice from the Court.
Mr Parikshit Saini, learned counsel for the petitioner, submitted that impugned order of the Information Officer was arbitrary and patently illegal, hence, was not maintainable. He argued that impugned order was ‘unreasonable’ and ‘non-speaking’, the officer failed to justify the penalty as he gave a brief reply as to why the delay was caused by him for discharging his duties. He relied on the judgment of Supreme Court, in Narendra Kumar v. CIC, 2014 (2) UD 72 where it was observed, “State Public Information Officer has decided any complaint or appeal without any reasonable cause, refused to receive an application for information or has not furnished information within the time etc., in that event penalty can be imposed. In the further opinion of this Court, if there was reasonable cause for furnishing the delayed information then Chief Information Commissioner should not impose penalty merely because there was some delay in supplying the information.”
The Court observed that judgment in case Narendra Kumar was not applicable in the aforementioned case, as in the referred case information was not supplied in time because of natural disaster but in the case of petitioner there was delay of one year in supply of the information whereas Act, 2005 mandates to provide information within thirty days. Cause shown by the petitioner for delay in supplying the information was the excessive workload. The Court stated that, petitioner has not explained his excessive work; this was no ground for the delay in providing the information. One year delay in providing information under the Right to Information Act was too high.
It further held that Commissioner has assigned the reason for the penalty. “Providing information after one year that too on filing of appeal in the State Information Commission amounts to denial of information.” Court found no illegality or perversity in the impugned order and directed the petitioner to pay the aforementioned penalty.[Chandrakant Bhatt v. Uttarakhand Information Commission, 2019 SCC OnLine Utt 356, decided on 10-05-2019]
