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Canara Bank Rep. by its Deputy Gen. Manager v. C.S. Shyam & Anr.

Civil Appeal · 2017 INSC 835Decided 31 Aug 2017
Civil Appeal No. 22 of 2009
Justice R.K. Agrawal · Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre

Background

A clerical staff member of Canara Bank filed an RTI application seeking detailed personal transfer and posting information (dates of joining, promotions, transferring authorities, etc.) about the entire clerical staff across all branches of the bank over a roughly 4.5-year period. The Bank's Public Information Officer and then its Chief Public Information Officer both refused the request, holding the information was personal and exempt under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, 2005, with no larger public interest shown. However, the Central Information Commission reversed this and ordered disclosure, a ruling the Kerala High Court (both the Single Judge and Division Bench) upheld. The Bank then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court allowed the Bank's appeal, holding the matter was already settled by its earlier rulings in Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner and R.K. Jain v. Union of India. It held that service-related personal details of individual employees, matters essentially between an employee and employer, governed by service rules, qualify as "personal information" exempt from disclosure under Section 8(1)(j), unless the person seeking disclosure demonstrates a larger public interest that justifies it. Since the requester had not shown any such public interest, and neither the Central Information Commission nor the High Court had found one, the Court held the original RTI application was wrongly allowed. It set aside the orders of the High Court and the Central Information Commission and restored the original orders of the Bank's information officers rejecting the request.

Lesson Learnt

Personal service details of government/public-sector employees (transfers, postings, service records, etc.) are generally exempt from RTI disclosure as an unwarranted invasion of privacy unless the person seeking the information can show it serves a genuine larger public interest: simple curiosity or a personal dispute with a colleague is not enough.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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