New Delhi, Nov 2: The Delhi High Court has set aside a Central Information Commission (CIC) order directing disclosure of information on cases in which judgments were reserved but not pronounced within two months by its former judge, Justice A K Sikri.
Justice Sikri was appointed as a Delhi High Court judge in July 1999. He was elevated as the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in September 2012.
Justice Amit Mahajan, in a judgment passed on October 29, said that although timely delivery of judgments is undoubtedly a matter of public concern, the Right to Information (RTI) Act provides access only to information that is available with the public authority.
Holding that the public authority is not obliged to collect and collate information, the judge said that concerns of public interest cannot compel the creation of information which is not maintained.
In 2009, a former judicial officer, P D Gupta, had sought complete details of all cases heard by Justice Sikri, singly or in a division bench in the high court, in which judgment was delivered more than two months after the conclusion of arguments.
The Public Information Officer (PIO) assailed the CIC’s May 2011 order which directed disclosure of the information sought by Gupta “for a period of two years only preceding the date of the RTI application”, contending that such data was not maintained by the functionaries of the high court.
In the judgment, the court observed that pursuant to the Supreme Court laying down guidelines with respect to the time frame during which the courts should pass judgments, the high court’s registrar general, in 2003, directed all the court masters to prepare, in a sealed cover, a monthly list of cases where the judgments are reserved and not pronounced by the respective benches.
It said that the office order only required the court masters to furnish the monthly lists to be placed before the chief justice so that the attention of the bench concerned might be drawn to the pending matters, and neither the top court’s guidelines nor the office order requires the lists to be preserved or compiled judge-wise.
“The lists were sent to Hon’ble the Chief Justice only so that necessary administrative action could be taken on delayed matters. Therefore, the stand of the respondent that the information is readily available with the Court Masters or the office of Hon’ble the Chief Justice cannot be accepted,” the court observed.
“It is trite law that the RTI Act provides access only to such information as is available and existing with the public authority… This Court is mindful that while timely delivery of judgments is undoubtedly a matter of public concern, the consideration of public interest arises only when the information exists,” it concluded.
The court also noted that the information sought by the RTI applicant required the examination of the records of all the cases heard by Justice Sikri — an exercise that was impossible and would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority.
Restricting the period to two years does not change the nature of the exercise, the court said, while adding that the CIC order proceeded on a “presumption” that the information “should be available”.
Justice Sikri retired as a judge of the Supreme Court in 2019.
