This question if gets an answer as
‘yes’ may sound a bit weird and unwarranted in employee’s point of view as
nobody would like supply of personal records to public.
Of
Course there is sense in employee’s case in this issue as Service book of an
Government Employee contains very important information about his/her service
including disciplinary proceedings taken against him/her.
More
seriously, Service Book of a Government Employee would also contain certain
personal information such as nominees, present health status, whether undergone
any family planning procedures etc., which could be misused against an employee
by unscrupulous elements under the cover of RTI.
However,
Central Information Commission has decided in a case recently which came for
appeal that PIO to supply a copy of the service record of employee under RTI
after invoking Sec.10(1) of the RTI Act to sever all those portions that are
exempt from disclosure u/s 8(1)(j) of the Act as personal information.
An
Extract of order portion in this case is as follows.
“The
Commission however, holds that the Public Authority is obligated under section
4(1)(b) the RTI Act to disclose information related to the service of its
employees and is not convinced by Shri D’Costa’s argument that such disclosure
will endanger his physical safety as all this information is anyway expected to
be placed in the public domain.The Commission accordingly directs the PIO to
supply a copy of the service record of Shri Allan D’Costa to the Appellant
after invoking Sec.10(1) of the RTI Act to sever all those portions that are
exempt from disclosure u/s 8(1)(j) of the Act as personal information. The
information should reach the Appellant within four weeks of receipt of this
order.”
Though
CIC ruling contains a rider for safeguarding private information of a
Government employee out of purview of RTI, officials who actually supply
information under RTI may find it difficult to differentiate between public and
private information related to an employee. In the process, RTI information
seeker with profit or malicious motive could sneak in with private information
of Government employees.
We
hope Government would come up with a meaningful classification of public and
private information of a Government Employee and notifiy the same for effective
implementation at lower level, which could find an effective soultion to this
issue.
Source:
rtiIndia.org
