Appellant: C&AG office had conducted a special audit of NTRO in which some comments have been made relating to the appellant & he sought copies of the file notings relating to him - CIC: NTRO is an exempt organisation u/s 24 of the RTI Act; denial upheld
17 Oct, 2014FACTS
Vide RTI dt 6.12.2012 appellant had sought information on 2 points
2. CPIO vide letter dt 31.12.2012 granted permission to inspect file notings, records, etc. pertaining to appellant’s RTI request. However, permission to inspect files relating to processing of the assessment of appellant’s bio-data for the post of Scientist-F in NTRO by the Special Audit Team was withheld due to the reason that it contains information provided by NTRO to the audit team, which is exempted from disclosure under RTI Act.
3. An appeal was filed on 25.2.2013.
4. AA vide order dt 28.3.2013 observed that inspection was allowed and upheld the decision of the CPIO.
5. Submissions made by the appellant and public authority were heard. Appellant submitted that the C&AG office had conducted a special audit of the NTRO and according to information available to him, some comments have been made in the audit report relating to the appellant and he was seeking copies of these file notings relating to him. He further submitted that Section 24 would not apply to the C&AG as it is not ‘government’ as mentioned in the Section. Public authority submitted that a special audit had been done of the NTRO which was based on documents provided by NTRO, which is an exempt organisation. As such the information being sought relates to an exempt organisation and hence the information was denied.
DECISION
6. The issue raised by the appellant as to whether information provided by NTRO to the C&AG can be treated as exempt or not has already been dealt with by the Commission in their order dt 6.5.13 (CIC/SM/A/2012/001740 and CIC/SM/A/2013/000068). The NTRO is an exempt organisation u/s 24 of the RTI Act and the appellant is serving in the NTRO. As the audit carried out by the office of C&AG relates to an exempt organisation and is based on material provided by the exempt organisation, the Commission concurs with the decision of the CPIO/AA. The appeal is disposed of.
(Rajiv Mathur)
Chief Information Commissioner
Citation: Shri Manuj Modi v. DG of Audit (Central Expenditure) in File No.CIC/DS/A/2013/002370/RM