HC stays right to information disclosure order on IAS officer

Responding to a senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer's petition, the Gujarat High Court, yesterday issued notices to the Gujarat government, the state public information officer, the chief information commissioner and a journalist.

The officer, Arvind Agrawal, had approached the High Court seeking quashing of order of the state public information officer, directing the state government to furnish the Annual Property Returns (APRs) of the state's IAS, IPS and IFS officers.

Agrawal, is vice chairman/managing director of Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC).

The Gujarat public information commissioner, responding to application of one Kapil Dave, a journalist, had ordered the state government to furnish the APRs of senior IAS/IPS and IFS officers. The appeal was filed in October 2008.

The RTI application had been filed to seek information about the personal worth of some of the top bureaucrats in the state and to determine whether this was disproportionate to their known source of income.

The state General Administration and Forest & Environment departments had denied information on grounds that the information being sought was of a personal nature and could not be shared under the RTI  act. The state's Home Department furnished APRs of some IPS officers who consented to sharing it.