‘SC Registrar cannot be directed to maintain records under RTI’- Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court recently ruled that under the Right to Information Act, the Registrar of the Supreme Court cannot be directed to maintain records pertaining to reserved judgments..The judgment came in the background of an appeal filed by the Registrar against a Single Bench order of the Delhi High Court that had allowed for disclosing information on the time period for which judgments were being reserved, before being pronounced..The Respondent had filed two applications under the RTI Act seeking details of the cases pending before the Supreme Court of India in which the arguments have been heard and the orders had been reserved during the period 2007-2009. The Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the Supreme Court had not provided the information on the ground that it was not available in that form..Prashant Bhushan, who appeared for the Respondents, had earlier argued before the Division Bench of Chief Justice G Rohini & Justice Jayant Nath that in the present digital era, there ought to be no difficulty for the Supreme Court’s Registrar to provide the relevant data in an easily accessible manner..The Bench however, has not agreed with Bhushan’s submissions for it goes on to state in its order that the RTI Act did not make it incumbent upon a public authority to ‘collect/collate the non-available information and then furnish to an applicant.’.“On a combined reading of Section 4(1)(a) and Section 2(i), it appears to us that the requirement is only to maintain the records in a manner which facilitates the right to information under the Act. As already noticed above, “right to information” under Section 2(j) means only the right to information which is held by any public authority. We do not find any other provision under the Act under which a direction can be issued to the public authority to collate the information in the manner in which it is sought by the applicant.”.You can read the judgment below.