CIC: Educational qualification certificates & other documents of an employee are in the nature of personal information about a third party; filing these documents for the purpose of seeking employment not reason enough for it to be made public
19 Nov, 2014Information sought:
The appellant has sought the following information/documents related to Sh. Ravinder Kumar:-
(i) Copy of Marksheets.
(ii) School Leaving Certificate.
(iii) Entrance letter and other related documents.
Grounds for the Second Appeal: The CPIO has not provided the desired information due to the denial of third party.
Relevant Facts emerging during Hearing: The following were present Appellant: Absent
Respondent: Mr. J. Mandal CPIO’s representative through VC
The CPIO’s representative stated that the appellant in his RTI application dated 09/03/2013 had sought copies of the documents supplied by Shri Ravinder Kumar for obtaining employment as GDS and they had carried out the process as outlined under Section 11 of the RTI Act but the employee has objected to the disclosure. He further stated that the information is personal in nature and exempt under Section 8(1)(j) Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, there shall be no obligation to give any citizen, information which relates to personal information the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information: Provided that the information which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person. of the RTI Act as no larger public purpose is involved. The appellant is not present for canvassing his case/contesting the CPIO’s representative’s submissions.
Decision notice:
It is fairly obvious that the educational qualification certificates & other documents of an employee are in the nature of personal information about a third party. The employee might have filed these documents before the appointing authority for the purpose of seeking employment, but that is not reason enough for this information to be brought in to the public domain to which anybody could have access. The appellant has not demonstrated any larger public purpose which the disclosure of this information would serve. Hence, we concur with the submissions of the CPIO’s representative that the information is exempt from disclosure. The matter is closed.
BASANT SETH
Information Commissioner
Citation: Mohd. Majhar Imam S/o Mohd. Jainul Awdeen v. Department of Posts in File No. CIC/BS/A/2013/001851/5872