[dropcap]T[/dropcap]HE Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Sudhir Bhargava has held that information on the names of members of Parliament (MP) who sign motions of impeachment of high court and Supreme Court judges should be exempt from the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 as otherwise it is likely to influence the discharge of their parliamentary duties and influence their independent functioning as MPs.
The CIC said the disclosure under the RTI Act of the names of the MPs signing a motion of impeachment as well as of those who subsequently withdraw their names could open up their parliamentary conduct to public scrutiny. This, he said, would cause breach of parliamentary privilege, thereby exempting such information from disclosure under section 8(1)(c) of the RTI Act, 2005. Section 8(1)(c) of the RTI Act provides exemption from disclosure of information if such disclosure will cause a breach of privilege of Parliament or the state legislature.
The CIC order comes in the wake of an RTI application that was filed by a S Malleswara Rao in December 2016 before the Central Public Information Office (CPIO), Rajya Sabha Secretariat, seeking information on the impeachment motion against Justice C V Nagarjuna Reddy of the Andhra Pradesh and Telengana High Court.
Justice Reddy was accused of unduly interfering in the judicial process in several cases and uttering casteist slurs, including death threats against a Dalit Junior Civil Judge Sanku Rama Krishna at the courts in Rayachoti, in Andhra Pradesh’s Kadapa district. Rayachoti is also Justice Nagarjuna Reddy’s hometown.
In his RTI application, Rao had sought state wise information on the total number of Rajya Sabha MPs who had signed and moved the impeachment motion, along with their names and copies of the duly signed representations, and the total number of Rajya Sabha MPs who had subsequently withdrawn support to the motion along with their names and copies of the duly signed representations. He had also sought a copy of the rules/procedure relating to the acceptance and withdrawal of motions by the MPs.
Rao’s application had earlier already been turned down by the CPIO on July 5, 2017 on the grounds that the information was covered by the section 8(1)(c) exemption.
Background
On June 18, 2018, the CIC directed the CPIO to inform the commission as to why providing these details would constitute a breach of parliamentary privilege. When the matter came up for hearing again on May 13, 2019, the RTI applicant submitted that the information relating to the impeachment of Justice Reddy had already been published by the newspapers and was available to the public at large.
The Rajya Sabha secretariat, for its part and with approval from the upper house chairman, Venkaiah Naidu, informed the CIC that an MP’s notice of motion formed part of their parliamentary duties and would therefore be covered within the meaning and scope of the term ‘Proceedings in Parliament’. The disclosure of such information would cause a breach of parliamentary privilege and was therefore covered by the exemption provided under Section 8 (1) (c) of the RTI Act, the secretariat contended.
The CPIO further clarified that merely because some newspapers published information regarding the notice of removal of the judge, it did not imply that the Secretariat should part with the information about the proceedings of the House or its members.
While accepting all the contentions of the Rajya Sabha secretariat, CIC Bhargava however, directed the CPIO to provide the RTI applicant with a copy of the rules/procedure relating to the acceptance and withdrawal of motions by MPs.
Over 60 members of the Rajya Sabha, cutting across party lines, submitted a motion seeking the initiation of impeachment proceedings against Justice Reddy in December 2018, after the first attempt in 2016 by 61 MPs failed when 19 signatories withdrew. Justice Reddy retired from office on December 5, 2018.
Read the Order of CIC
[pdfviewer]https://cdn.theleaflet.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/18170536/CIC_impeachment.pdf[/pdfviewer]
