The Delhi high court on Tuesday remarked that the PM CARES Fund, despite being constituted, managed, administered, supervised and controlled by the government, may still enjoy the privacy safeguards available to third parties in relation to the disclosure of their information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
The PM CARES Fund was established in March 2020 to provide relief to citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic or similar emergencies.
A bench of chief justice DK Upadhyay and justice Tejas Karia made the remarks while hearing an appeal filed by RTI applicant Girish Mittal challenging the single judge’s ruling on January 22, 2024.
The single judge had set aside the Central Information Commission’s (CIC) order, directing the Income Tax department to disclose information related to the grant of tax exemption status to the PM CARES Fund to Mittal, concluding that the order was passed without hearing the PM CARES Fund, which is a third party under the RTI Act.
The division bench, added that the privacy safeguards are expressly provided to the third parties under Section 11 of the RTI Act, as per which where a Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) or State Public Information Officer (SPIO) proposes to disclose information or records relating to a third party that have been treated as confidential it has to give prior notice to the concerned third party informing them of the information request and the proposed disclosure, after which a decision may be taken.
Public character of an entity does not disentitle it from the safeguards afforded to third parties under the RTI Act, the bench further said.
“How can you say that merely there is an entity which discharges a certain public function, which has been formed by the government, managed, administered, supervised, and controlled by the government; nonetheless, it is an entity, it is a legal juristic personality. How can you deny such a right (right to privacy) conferred on a third party merely because it is a public authority?” the bench told Mittal’s lawyer Pranav Sachdeva.
The court added, “Merely because it (PM CARES Fund) is a society formed by government officials, it will not enjoy the immunity otherwise available to third parties under RTI…that argument we will not… When we talk about third parties, it may be a private trust, private body, society, cooperative society, or anything. Public or not, that will not be different so far as the rights of the third party are concerned. There is a rationale behind it. Primarily, the RTI Act says that only that information will be provided which is maintained by the department. Here in this case, the IT department is not the primary repository of the information which you are seeking; it is the PM CARES Fund.”
This was after Mittal’s lawyer Pranav Sachdeva submitted that disclosure of information by the IT department regarding the PM CARES Fund did not infringe the right to privacy since the entity in question was a public charitable trust comprising government officials, including the Prime Minister as an ex officio member.
The matter would be next heard in February, when Sachdeva is likely to continue with his submissions.