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The high court here on Tuesday said the Attorney General of India’s (AGI’s) office was a public authority, under the ambit of the Right to Information Act.
“It is not disputed that the functions of AGI are also in the nature of public functions. The AGI performs the functions as are required by virtue of Article 76(2) of the Constitution of India. ..., a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court held the office of the AGI to be a public office. In this view also, the office of the AGI should be a public authority within the meaning of Section 2(h) of the RTI Act,” judge Vibhu Bakhru said, while setting aside a December 2012 Central Information Commission (CIC) order to the contrary.
The court refused to consider the government's argument that there is a practical difficulty in providing information under the Act, as the office of the AGI does not have the requisite infrastructure.
The court also remanded to the CIC, the pleas of RTI activists Subhash Chandra Agarwal and R K Jain, who had sought that the office of the AGI be declared a public authority under the transparency law. It directed the AGI to reconsider the RTI application of Jain, as his plea for information was denied on the basis of the CIC order that the office of AGI is not a public authority
The CIC, in its 2012 order, had expressed the opinion that the AGI was only a person and could not be considered an “authority” and, therefore, fell outside sweep of section 2(h) of the RTI Act. Section 2(h) of the Act defines “public authority”.
While setting aside the CIC order, the bench noted in its 13-page judgement that the expression 'authority' under the RTI Act would include all persons or bodies that have been conferred power to perform the functions entrusted to them and those performing advisory functions cannot be excluded.
"Merely because the bulk of the duties of the AGI are advisory, the same would not render the office of the AGI any less authoritative than other constitutional functionaries. The expression "authority" as used in Section 2(h) cannot be read as a term to exclude bodies or entities which are, essentially, performing advisory functions," the court said.
