The High Court agreed with the submission by ED’s counsel that it is an intelligence and security organisation specified in the second schedule of the RTI Act, and therefore exempt from its purview, except when the information sought concerns corruption and human rights violations.
However, it did not agree with the submission that only such information that is furnished by the exempted organization to the government pertaining to allegations of corruption and human rights violation is to be provided.
On the scope of ‘human rights’, it held,
“This Court is of the opinion that the expression ‘human rights’ cannot be given a narrow or pedantic meaning. It does not refer to the rights of the accused alone. Human rights have been used for a variety of purposes, from resisting torture and arbitrary incarceration to determining the end of hunger and of medial neglect. In fact, the human rights are both progressive and transformative.”
The Court also noted that in the present petition, the respondent was not seeking information about any investigation or intelligence or covert operations carried out nationally or internationally and if such information was being sought, the ED was entitled to deny the information under RTI.
It also clarified that the information pertaining to proposals for promotion of third parties cannot be provided to the respondent in view of Section 11 of the RTI Act.
Source: Barandbench
