Chandrakant Bhatt vs Uttarakhand Information Commission And Another

Alok Singh, J

Brief facts of the present case, inter alia, are that petitioner is working as Sahak Nagar Adhikari, Municipal Corporation, Roorkee, District Haridwar. On 27.01.2018, respondent no. 2 applied for information which was duly provided to him by the Public Information Officer well within time. Respondent no. 2 filed a complaint under Section 18 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 and thus, a show cause notice was issued to the petitioner vide order dated 19.12.2018 seeking to explain as to why a penalty of Rs.25,000/- may not be imposed. Thereafter, respondent no. 1 issued a letter dated 20.12.2018 seeking reply of the petitioner to the show cause notice. Petitioner gave information to respondent no.2 on 01.02.2019. Thereafter, State Information Commissioner decided the complaint on 7.03.2019 and imposed a penalty of Rs.25,000/- for delay. Feeling aggrieved, petitioner has approached this Court.

Mr. Parikshit Saini, Advocate for the petitioner submits that impugned order dated 07.03.2019 is patently illegal, as State Information Commission has not assigned any reason or given any finding that information under Section 7 of the Act has been malafidely denied or knowing given incorrect, incomplete or misleading or destroyed information, which was the subject of the request. In support of his contention he has placed reliance on paragraph 7 of the judgment passed by this Court in the case of Narendra Kumar Vs. The Chief Information Commissioner reported in 2014 (2) UD 72. Paragraph 7 of the said judgment reads as under:

"7. Having perused Section 20 of the Act, I have no hesitation to hold that when the Central Information Commission or the State Information Commission, as the case may be, while hearing the complaint or appeal, is of the opinion that Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer, as the case may be, has, without any reasonable cause, refused to receive an application for information or has not furnished information within the time specified under sub-section (1) of Section 7 or malafidely denied the request for information or knowingly given incorrect, incomplete or misleading information or destroyed information which was the subject of the request, 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."

In my opinion, judgment passed by this Court in the case of Narendra Kumar (supra) is of no help to the petitioner. In Narendra Kumar's case (supra) information could not be supplied as employees of Municipal Corporation were busy in collection and preparation of relevant data and other rescue work due to natural disaster work occurred in 2013. In the case in hand, there is delay of one year in supplying the information whereas Act mandates to provide information within thirty days. Cause shown by the petitioner for delay in supplying the information is excessive work. Petitioner has not explained his excessive work. This is no ground for delay in providing the information. One year delay in providing information under the Right to Information Act is too high.

The Commission has assigned the reason for imposing penalty. Providing information after one year that too on filing of appeal in the State Information Commission amounts to denial of information. Therefore, I do not find illegality or perversity in the impugned order.

Accordingly, writ petition fails and is hereby dismissed in limine. CLMA No. 6221 of 2019 also stands disposed of accordingly.