SC reserves order on contempt pleas against RBI for not disclosing information under RTI

The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its order on two contempt petitions filed against Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for not complying with the apex court's direction to disclose information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

A bench headed by Justice L Nageshwar Rao reserved the order after hearing the parties in the case -- Girish Mittal and Subhash Chandra Agrawal -- who filed contempt pleas.

The two had claimed that RBI and its former Governor Urjit Patel had "willfully and deliberately" disobeyed the apex court's judgement asking the central bank to disclose information under the RTI Act.

The two pleas sought initiation of contempt of court action against former Governor for not disclosing information as directed by the top court.

One of the contempt plea filed by Girish Mittal said that RBI refused to provide information sought about the inspection reports of some banks.

In December 2015, the petitioner under the RTI Act had sought certain information which included copies of inspection reports of ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and State Bank of India from April 2011 till December 2015.

The petitioner had also sought copies of case files with file notings on various irregularities detected by RBI in case of Sahara Group of companies and erstwhile Bank of Rajasthan by these entities themselves and their known/unknown promoters.

However, RBI denied the information in January 2016 that such information is exempted under Section 8(1)(e) of the RTI Act and Section 45NB of the Reserve Bank of India Act.

The petitioners contended that top court in 2016 while directing disclosure of a very similar type of information sought under the RTI Act had observed RBI is clearly not in any fiduciary relationship with any bank.

Filing the contempt pleas, petitioners stated that the responses of RBI are in complete violation of the apex court judgment by which it was held that RBI ought to act with transparency and not hide information that might embarrass individual banks and it is duty bound to comply with the provisions of the RTI Act and disclose the information sought.