Panjim: In a landmark order, State Information Commission on Wednesday said the Service Book of an employee is “personal” and cannot be provided to third party under the Right to Information Act.
Hearing the appeal from Excise inspector Amit Morajkar, SIC Juino D’Souza expresses serious concern the First Appellate Authority has passed an Order directing the PIO to provide certified copies of the Service Book of the third party without even hearing and considering the objections of the ‘Third Party’.
Also, it is seen that the procedure under section 11 has not been followed and which includes giving notice to the concerned officer, he said.
The Commission further observed that the FAA in the present case is a senior IAS officer, holding the post as ‘Commissioner of Excise’ and being a quasi judicial authority should have applied his mind and decided the First Appeal as per 19(1) purely on merits as per the RTI act 2005. The FAA is duty bound to see that the justice is done.
“The Service Book of an employee is essentially a matter between the employer and employee more so as it contains important records such as annual confidential report, family nomination, health status, disciplinary proceedings taken against the employee and other such information that is Personal in nature and every Government servant has a right to guard the same,” he observed.
Further, the order stated, unless larger public interest is shown, the furnishing of such records can cause prejudice and unwarranted invasion of privacy to the concerned government servant, besides the information can also be misused against the employee by unscrupulous elements using RTI as a cover.
The SIC cautioned the FAA is accordingly instructed to be more cautious in future while dealing with information that is ‘Personal’ in nature and which may cause invasion of privacy and also information falls under the ambit of exemptions under section 8 of the RTI act 2005, specially the exemption under section 8(1)(j) of the RTI act 2005.
“With these observations all proceedings in Appeal case stand closed,” the order states.
