Does PMO recommend any officer for promotion?
9 Nov, 2012Background
The appellant filed an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) seeking a variety of information regarding the payments made out of the Prime Minister's relief fund since 2007. He also wanted to know about all those cases in which officers from a number of departments had written to the Prime Minister of India and those cases in which the PM had recommended their cases for promotion. The Public Information Officer (PIO) provided the available information against all his queries except the number of cabinet meetings. The PIO stated that this request had been transferred to the Cabinet Secretariat that being the nodal agency for conducting Cabinet meetings.
Proceeding
During the hearing before the Central Information Commission (CIC), the appellant emphasised to get the information on the number of cases in which the PMO had recommended for promotion of any officer belonging to various departments of the government. The respondent pointed out that the query itself was not very clear and that there was no question of the PM or PMO recommending any particular officer for promotion in any department of the government and thus there is no such information available.
View of CIC
The Commission agreed with the contention of the respondents. The CIC observed that the query was sweeping and unclear and in a peremptory manner the appellant has listed a number of government departments and wants to find out about the number of officers who might have written to the PM or PMO soliciting recommendations for promotion and the number of such cases in which the PM or PMO had made any such recommendation. The Commission rejected the appeal stating that there was no such information to be disclosed.
Citation: Mr. Nitish Kumar Tripathi v. Prime Minister’s Office in File No.CIC/SM/A/2012/000289
RTI Citation : RTIFI/2012/CIC/780
Click here to view original RTI order of Court / Information Commission