Habibullah: CIC to continue hearings,rules as per law

Days after the Delhi High Court sought to curb the autonomy of the Central Information Commission by holding that it had no power to frame the June 2007 rules...

Days after the Delhi High Court sought to curb the autonomy of the Central Information Commission by holding that it had no power to frame the June 2007 rules to regulate its functioning,its chief Wajahat Habibullah said that the Commission would continue to function in the same manner and that the Attorney General has assured that the rules were in sync with the laws.

Denying any possibility of moving the Supreme Court against the verdict,he said the Commission has asked the Centre to expedite its request to notify rules in the official gazette,thereby according legal sanction.

In a stance not in tandem with what the court ruled on May 21,Habibullah said the rules were never in violation of the RTI Act or that the CIC lacked the power to frame them. I spoke to Attorney General G E Vahanvati today and discussed at length the repercussions of the HC verdict. He told me that the rules were not in violation of the RTI Act. He assured me that Section 12 of the Act empowered the CIC to frame the impugned regulations, Habibullah said.

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He declined that the court ruling was in any way prohibitory as far as the present functioning of the CIC was concerned.

Significantly,the court,while setting aside the Central Information Commission (Management) Regulations 2007,had questioned the provision which treated an order by a single Information Commissioner or by a Division Bench or by a Full Bench as a CIC decision. There is no such prescription under the RTI Act or the rules validly made thereunder which provides for such Benches, the judgment said.

The significant paragraph from the court ruling that questioned his power to ask for notification was: The Chief Information Commissioner does not fall within the definition of appropriate Government or competent authority. In other words,he has no powers to make rules under Section 27 or Section 28… such rules would only be operative if they are notified in the official gazette.

A few Information Commissioners apprehended that functioning as usual would mean contempt of the court. Two of them postponed the hearing of appeals on Wednesday till the government cleared the air on the constitution of benches at the panel.