Dear Comrades,
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
