Seeking mortgage deed of Recovery Case under RTI

Background

The appellant had sought the certified copies of the mortgage deed of a Recovery Case through an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act enclosing an annexure giving the details of the case. The Public Information Officer (PIO) stated that the annexure has not been enclosed and thus it is difficult to judge the query. PIO asked to re-send the annexure but no reply was received after the appellant had re-sent the annexure.

Proceedings

No one appeared before the Central Information Commission (CIC) for the hearing. The CIC noted that it is not clear from the papers whether the appellant was the customer of the Bank who has created the mortgage in favour of the Bank.

View of CIC

The Central Information Commission (CIC) ruled that if the appellant is the customer of the Bank who has created the mortgage deed in favour of the bank, the information should be provided and if it has not been created by the appellant the information will be covered under the exemption Section 8(1)(e) Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, there shall be no obligation to give any citizen, information available to a person in his fiduciary relationship, unless the competent authority is satisfied that the larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information; of the RTI Act. The CIC further directed the PIO that any information in compliance with this Order has to provided free of cost as per Section 7(6) of RTI Act.

Citation: Mr. Harikrishan v. Bank of India in Decision No. CIC/DS/A/2011/004351/SG/19434