Information concerning pending litigation in the trial court was sought under RTI
4 Dec, 2012Background
The appellant filed an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act with the Calcutta High Court seeking information concerning some pending litigation in the trial court for a very long period of time, such as the destruction of the case file and some other related matters. The Public Information Officer (PIO) informed the appellant that the High Court had forwarded his letter to the District Judge of Alipore for further necessary action.
Proceeding
During the hearing before the Central Information Commission (CIC), the appellant submitted that he had been waiting for more than 26 years for a final outcome of the litigation concerning his property and had several grievances against the trial court in respect of the manner in which his case had been conducted.
View of CIC
The Central Information Commission (CIC) observed that the questions raised by the appellant are directly concerned with the case records and the manner of the maintenance of those records by the lower court. The Commission held that the said lower court comes under the jurisdiction of the District Court which has a separate PIO. If there is any information regarding the queries raised by the complainant, those could be answered only by the PIO of the District Court and not of the High Court. The CIC held that the right place where the RTI application should be preferred is the PIO of the District Court of Alipore, which comes under the jurisdiction of the State Information Commission (SIC) and not the CIC. The Commission advised the appellant to approach the State Public Information Officer (SPIO) of the relevant District Court to find out about his case.
Citation: Mr. Niranjan Saha v. Calcutta High Court in File No.CIC/SM/C/2012/000058
RTI Citation : RTIFI/2012/CIC/844
Click here to view original RTI order of Court / Information Commission