History of posting of IRS officers
16 Dec, 2011
Background
The appellant sought names of all IRS officers group A (C&CE) along with their latest history of posting. The PIO informed the appellant that History of Postings of IRS (C&CE) officers available with the public authority in the present format has officer’s information under three headings viz. (1) Employee Information (2) Posting details and (3) Summary of Postings. The information under the heading ‘Employee Information’ consists of personal information, the disclosure of which has no relation to any public activity or interest. Hence the History of postings of IRS Officers cannot be provided to him in the available format. The FAA observed that the appellant, who is himself an Additional Commissioner rank officer in the IRS (C&CE), is well aware of the nature of information available. Every officer in IRS is provided with individual User id and Password to access and view his/her History of Postings. This means that the appellant has his password and as an officer he must have viewed his own History of Postings. The present format as available has personal information that this is of no public interest, with the above observations, the FAA dismissed appellant’s appeal.
View of CIC
During the hearing the respondent submitted that CBEC has recently decided to provide information on case to case basis to the RTI applicants and the CBEC is in the process of preparing software consisting of information about posting of all the 2300 IRS Officers. The Commission directed the PIO to provide an opportunity to the appellant for inspection of relevant documents, except personal information of other officers, on a mutually convenient date and time, within two weeks of the receipt of this order. The Commission also advised that after completing the process of compiling information in software about posting of IRS Officers, the respondents should put this information on their website.
Citation: Shri Ranjit Kumar v. Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue in Case No. CIC/SS/A/2011/001187