Nitish Banka

    • PRIME MINISTER’S RELIEF FUND & THE RTI ACT.

    Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act states that every public authority shall publish the particulars of its organization, functions and duties, the powers and duties of its officers and employees, the procedure followed in the decision making process, including channels of supervision and accountability, the norms set by it for the discharge of its functions, the rules, regulations, instructions, manuals and records, held by it or under its control or used by its employees for discharging its functions ,a statement of the categories of documents that are held by it or under its control, the particulars of any arrangement that exists for consultation with, or representation by, the members of the public in relation to the formulation of its policy or implementation thereof, a statement of the boards, councils, committees and other bodies consisting of two or more persons constituted as its part or for the purpose of its advice, and as to whether meetings of those boards, councils, committees and other bodies are open to the public, or the minutes of such meetings are accessible for public, a directory of its officers and employees, the monthly remuneration received by each of its officers and employees, including the system of compensation as provided in its regulations, the budget allocated to each of its agency, indicating the particulars of all plans, proposed expenditures and reports on disbursements made, the manner of execution of subsidy programmes, including the amounts allocated and the details of beneficiaries of such programmes, particulars of recipients of concessions, permits or authorizations granted by it, details in respect of the information, available to or held by it, reduced in an electronic form, the particulars of facilities available to citizens for obtaining information, including the working hours of a library or reading room, if maintained for public use, the names, designations and other particulars of the Public Information Officers and such other information as may be prescribed and thereafter update these publications every year.
    In the case of Subhash Chandra Agrawal v. CPIO ( [2013] CIC 12093) which was decided on August 12, 2013 it was held that The details of the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund with respect to the individuals receiving assistance to it shall continue to be treated as personal information and will not be disclosed under RTI Act. It was also mentioned by the court that since the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund does not receive any budgetary assistance from the Central Government or, from any of the Central Government public undertakings and is fully made of voluntary donations given by individual citizens or private bodies. Hence, the assistance provided from this fund cannot be treated as a subsidy like the other subsidies. It was also advocated that since the individuals receiving the assistance treated this as a private document hence, the question of public display stands nowhere, here. This could have come under the purview of RTI ACT Sec. 4 1(b) only when the funding would have been from the funds of the Central Government. Thus, the petition by a RTI activist was rejected.
    Information Courtesy : Supreme Court Cases.