CIC to challenge Delhi high court order in Supreme Court

The Central Information Commission will move the Supreme Court against a decision of the Delhi high court scrapping the procedures being followed by the panel in disposing of appeals.

This was decided at a meeting of all the information commissioners early this week.

The commission, while deciding to move the apex court, took note of a Patna high court ruling which had allowed Bihar's state information commission to frame its own rules for the conduct of its business.

"There seems to be a contradiction between the Patna high court and Delhi high court decisions. We have decided to approach the Supreme Court so that the matter could be clarified," chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah said today.

A decision by the Supreme Court will also bring uniformity in the functioning of the information commissions across the country, he said.

The commission, meanwhile, has decided to continue with its routine business and conduct daily hearings.

The Delhi high court had last month struck down the rules framed by the chief information commissioner on the procedure for deciding appeals before the panel under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, saying the commissioner had no power to enact such regulations under the transparency law.

The order was passed on a plea of the DDA (Delhi Development Authority) seeking quashing of the Central Information Commission (Management) Regulations, 2007, drawn up by the commissioner to decide the procedure for special appeals before the panel.

"The chief information commissioner has no powers to make rules under the RTI Act," a bench of justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and justice Veena Birbal had said.

Both the "appropriate government" and the "competent authority" have been empowered by the rules to make rules to carry out provisions of the Act," the bench said.

"The CIC by formulating the regulations and prescribing the procedure for deciding appeals has clearly violated the provisions of the RTI Act," the court added.

Concern was also expressed by one information commissioner that the high court ruling impinged upon the functional autonomy of the panel.

"Not only autonomy in the functioning of the CIC has thus been impinged upon, but the future course of action, in respect of protecting the rights of information seekers, has been halted at the cost of jeopardising the RTI movement launched by the civil society and strongly supported by the UPA government," MM Ansari said.

According to Ansari, the implication of the high court order was that a single or division bench cannot decide an appeal before the commission.