By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Friday suspended a Central Information Commission’s (CIC) order that asked the apex court’s registry to make public various documents on recent appointment of its three judges, superseding other senior chief justices of various high courts.
A bench of B. Sudershan Reddy and Justice Deepak Verma also suspended that part of the CIC ruling which ordered disclosure of the recent communication between Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan and K.Raghupathy of the Madras High Court on an alleged dictate by a union minister to the latter to grant bail to a person in a criminal case.
The bench stayed the CIC’s order on a lawsuit by the apex court registry, which had challenged the ruling.
The apex court bench passed the order after Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati for the apex court registry sought immediate suspension of the order that the information with the chief justice of India is exempted from disclosure under certain provisions of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
Vahanvati said the issue whether the CJI’s office comes within the ambit of RTI is pending before a three-judge bench of the Delhi High Court and, accordingly, the CIC should have refrained from directing the CJI’s office to make the disclosure of the information.
The three-judge bench began examining the issue after the apex court registry moved the high court, challenging its single judge bench order, which had upheld another CIC order for disclosure of the assets of apex court judges.
After the incident, apex court judges decided to voluntarily decided to disclose their assets, but without conceding that part of the order which held that CJI office comes under the ambit of the 2005 transparency law.
The CIC had Nov 25 ruled “The recommendation of appointment of justices is decidedly a public activity conducted in the overriding public interest. However, the plea of seeking exemption under the definition of fiduciary relationship cannot stand, and even if accepted in technical terms, will not withstand the test of public interest.”