You can access file notings, govt stand not binding on me, says Information chief

Pitting himself against a defiant bureaucracy, Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has said that as far as he is concerned, fi...

Pitting himself against a defiant bureaucracy, Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has said that as far as he is concerned, file notings come under the definition of information and, therefore, are accessible under the Right to Information Act.

He has also made it clear that the Department of Personnel’s definition which excludes file notings and the PM’s recent guidelines on making only select notings public are not binding on him.

Speaking exclusively to The Indian Express, Habibullah said: “My view is that file notings are part of the definition of information. However, decisions on whether particular file notings can or cannot be given to applicants under RTI will be made by the Commission when appeals are decided by us from time to time.’’

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When told that the Department of Personnel and Training (the nodal ministry that drafted the RTI law) still excludes file notings from its website, Habibullah said: ‘‘What the DoPT has said is not binding for me. In fact, even what the PMO has issued by way of clarification is not binding on the Commission. As per the definition of information given in Section 2 of the Act, file notings, according to me, are included in the body definition of information.’’

Habibullah’s views come at a time when the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT)—the nodal Ministry which drafted the final Act—is examining guidelines by the Prime Minister on how “substantive file notings’’ can be disclosed to the public.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More

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