On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court held that even if the PM CARES Fund is run, supervised, or controlled by the government, it does not automatically forfeit its right to privacy under the Right to Information Act, pushing back against demands for disclosure of documents filed by the fund with tax authorities and underlining limits on RTI transparency for third-party entities.
The observation came in an appeal filed by RTI applicant Girish Mittal, who is seeking access to information submitted by the PM CARES Fund to claim exemptions under the Income Tax Act. The Central Information Commission had earlier ordered disclosure of the material, but that direction was overturned by a single judge of the High Court, who ruled that information protected under Section 138 of the Income Tax Act could not be released through RTI and that the tax statute would prevail over the RTI Act.
Challenging this, the appellant argued before the Division Bench that a public charitable trust set up by the government cannot claim privacy under the RTI framework and that statutory tax confidentiality should not shield the fund from public scrutiny.
A Division Bench led by Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, with Justice Tejas Karia, made it clear that the case concerns privacy rights under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, not the constitutional right under Article 21, and stressed that third-party privacy protections apply uniformly, irrespective of whether the entity is public or private. Rejecting the argument that government control erases such protection, the Court remarked, “Even if it is State, merely because it is State, it does it lose its right to privacy… How can you deny such a right merely because it is a public authority?” .
The Bench noted that trusts, societies, and other juristic persons retain privacy rights under RTI, and public functions alone do not justify disclosure without following the statutory safeguards. The matter has now been listed for further hearing, with the Income Tax Department set to respond.
Disclaimer: This news/ article includes information received via a syndicated news feed. The original rights remain with the respective publisher.
Picture Source :
