Disclose fee paid to ASG: CIC

The Additional Solicitor General, representing the State cannot be equated with private lawyer of private client, the Central Information Commission has held directing the Centre to disclose payments made to ASG Sanjay Jain on the bills raised by him.
The CIC has directed the Law Ministry to disclose bills raised by Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain towards Government and payments made to him since his appointment on July 22, 2014.
The Commission rejected the arguments of it being personal information not covered under the disclosure norms of RTI Act.
Jain's counsel also claimed before the Commission that the information being sought related to payments made to him by Government of India is financial record of third party which is covered under personal information definition.

"As the payment was made from public exchequer by the public body for the counselling service rendered by the public servant, such financial statement could not be considered as third party information," Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu said.
The claims of the counsel and public information officer of Law Ministry that the fee received by the Additional Solicitor General was a privileged information were also not accepted by the Commission.

"When the legal counsels, attorneys and advocates are being paid from the public exchequer, the members of the public have right to know who is paid how much, for what and in which case. But the Commission finds no mention of such privilege anywhere in the Constitution or any other law which prevents the details of payment made to a public servant by a public authority out of public money," he said.

Acharyulu said the ASG represents the interests of 'state', i.E., the public in general and for that he is paid remuneration from public fund.
"Appellant explained that he filed several public interest litigations in which Sanjay Jain appeared as the ASG for Government. The ASG, representing state cannot be equated with private lawyer of private client. The Public Authority is paying from the taxpayer's money and tax-paying-citizen has right to information about why and how much was paid," Acharyulu said.
The Information Commissioner said the CPIO has to justify the denial on the touch stone of Section 8 of RTI Act alone.

"He (CPIO) cited a CIC order of 30th June 2006 which generally talked about confidentiality of information shared between a lawyer and client, in fiduciary capacity. It does not apply to this case because appellant did not ask for that, but sought fee details only," he said.
On the query of RTI applicant seeking file notings related to appointment of Jain as ASG, the Commissioner said that the information related to appointment of ASG should have been proactively disclosed.