In what could turn out to be a landmark judgment on the right to privacy of Indian citizens and whether private information such as religion and belief of an individual can be provided to anybody under the Right to Information Act (RTI), the Punjab and Haryana High Court is scheduled to rule on Monday if the Registrar General, Census Operations, is bound to provide details of the religion and faith of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and her children under the Act.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal will also decide on Monday if the contentions of a former Director-General of Police-rank officer of Haryana that he was entitled under the RTI Act to obtain details of the religion followed by Sonia Gandhi, her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and son Rahul Gandhi, who is general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, are correct or not.
A judgment favourable to the petitioner former IPS officer P C Wadhwa would open the floodgates in so far as the extent of private information that can be accessed under the RTI Act is concerned.
Wadhwa had sought information from the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the office of Registrar General, Census Operations, under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs about the religion mentioned by Sonia Gandhi and her children during the last census.
His application was rejected by the CPIO as well as the appellate authority. Thereafter, he filed a second appeal before the Central Information Commission (CIC), where his contention was that Sonia Gandhi, the late Rajiv Gandhi and other members of the family were public figures who had projected certain public image regarding their religious belief and faith. He also referred to media reports that said contradictory things about the religion of the couple and their children.
When the CIC rejected his contentions, he sought review of the order on the ground that the Gandhi couple’s “publicly displayed faith was divergent from the reality of their faith”. He also asserted that the country was entitled to know what the truth was.
However, in March 2008, the CIC rejected the prayer for a review of the earlier order, pointing out that the CIC has said it time and again that matters private to an individual couldn’t be forced out into the public under the RTI Act. “The sanctity of the private domain must be kept inviolate at all times,” the CIC order said.
The Bench headed by Chief Justice Mudgal has listed Wadhwa’s petition for judgment on Monday.
-Agencies