Seeking the pit mouth of value of iron ore per tonne from IBM using RTI
17 May, 2013Background
The appellant filed an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act with the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM), seeking information regarding the pit mouth of value of iron ore per tonne as declared by the leading iron ore miners in various states since August 2009 to July 2012 on the basis of which the average sale value was arrived at by the Indian Bureau of Mines for payment of ad valorem royalty. The Public Information Officer (PIO) denied the information under section 8(1)(d) Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, there shall be no obligation to give any citizen, information including commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of a third party, unless the competent authority is satisfied that larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information; of the RTI Act. On the directions of the First Appellate Authority (FAA), the PIO provided some information for the period July 2011 to July 2012.
Proceedings
During the hearing the before Central Information Commission (CIC), the appellant insisted that there was no reason why the entire information should not have been given to him. The respondent submitted that for the information pertaining to the period before July 2011, no compiled data was available and the information would have to be collated from the voluminous data received from several states. The respondent stated that the entire data was available electronically.
View of CIC
The Commission observed that if the data is available in electronic format, it can be copied in a CD and provided to the appellant for him to make sense of it. The CIC directed the PIO to provide a CD containing the entire data as received from the iron ore miners in various states for the months prior to the period for which the information has already been disclosed.
Citation: Mr. Arun Kumar Agrawal v. Indian Bureau of Mines, Ministry of Mines, Mining & Mineral Statistics Division in File No.CIC/SM/A/2012/001877
RTI Citation : RTIFI/2013/CIC/1285
Click here to view original RTI order of Court / Information Commission