Public Service Commissions within RTI ambit, Supreme Court upholds Kerala HC judgment (in part)

The Supreme Court today upheld a decision of the Kerala High Court which had held that the Public Service Commissions (PSC) are within the purview of the RTI Act and are bound to provide scanned copies of answer sheets of the written test, copy of the tabulation sheet and other information sought under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act)..The judgment was delivered by a Division Bench of Justices MY Eqbal and Arun Mishra..The Kerala High Court in its judgment delivered on March 9, 2011, had held that the RTI Act will apply to State Information Commissions. In the process, the High Court had turned down the contention that the concept of “information” for the purpose of the RTI Act has to be restricted to such information falling within the ambit of fundamental right to information as part of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19 (1) (a)..The High Court had consequently, directed the PSC to provide answer sheets and details of interview marks secured by the applicants. It had also directed that details of examiners who had evaluated the answer sheets be provided to the RTI applicants..The PSC had chosen to challenge this judgment in Supreme Court..The Supreme Court today held that the judgment insofar as it relates to the question of providing answer sheets and interview marks “do not suffer from error of law and the same is fully justified”..It, however, overturned the judgment with respect to the supply of examiners’ details..“We do not find any substance in the reasoning given by the Kerala High Court on the question of disclosure of names of the examiners.”.It allowed the contention of the PSC that there is a fiduciary relationship between the examiner and the PSC and disclosure of examiners’ details will be in breach of the same and might have “unfortunate consequences”..“In the present case, the PSC has taken upon itself in appointing the examiners to evaluate the answer papers and as such, the PSC and examiners stand in a principal-agent relationship. Here the PSC in the shoes of a Principal has entrusted the task of evaluating the answer papers to the Examiners. Consequently, Examiners in the position of agents are bound to evaluate the answer papers as per the instructions given by the PSC. As a result, a fiduciary relationship is established between the PSC and the Examiners. Therefore, any information shared between them is not liable to be disclosed..…..the request of the information seeker about the details of the person who had examined/checked the paper cannot and shall not be provided to the information seeker as the relationship between the public authority i.e. Service Commission and the Examiners is totally within fiduciary relationship. The Commission has reposed trust on the examiners that they will check the exam papers with utmost care, honesty and impartially and, similarly, the Examiners have faith that they will not be facing any unfortunate consequences for doing their job properly. If we allow disclosing name of the examiners in every exam, the unsuccessful candidates may try to take revenge from the examiners for doing their job properly. This may, further, create a situation where the potential candidates in the next similar exam, especially in the same state or in the same level will try to contact the disclosed examiners for any potential gain by illegal means in the potential exam.”.It also held that disclosure of examiners details will not serve any public interest and will only lead to ‘confusion’ and ‘public unrest’..“…we don’t see any logical reason as to how this will benefit him or the public at large. We would like to point out that the disclosure of the identity of Examiners is in the least interest of the general public and also any attempt to reveal the examiner’s identity will give rise to dire consequences. Therefore, in our considered opinion revealing examiner’s identity will only lead to confusion and public unrest. Hence, we are not inclined to agree with the decision of the Kerala High Court with respect to the second question.”.Read the judgment here.