Rejecting a plea of RTI applicant who had sought a copy of the assessment order of Ambani for the financial year 2004-05 along with a copy of the demand notice against him, the Commission said a confidential information shared by an individual with the government cannot be disclosed.
It said that the information given by an individual to the Income-Tax Department are "personal" and "private" and can be revealed only under specific conditions.
"Whenever there is an assurance of confidentiality to the information provided by private individual assesses, it should be allowed to be breached only when the reasons set out pass the strictest of tests," the Information Commissioner A N Tiwari said.
In his RTI application, Rasiklal S Mardia sought to know whether the Income-Tax Department had slapped Rs 1,156 crore tax demand on Ambani in assessment year of 2004-05.
He contended "tax evasion of Rs 1,156 crore by a single individual assessee cannot be said to be a matter between that assessee and the I-T Department, but must be a concern of larger public interest".
Turning down the plea of Mardia, the transparency panel said that a generalised assertion of public interest without supporting evidence cannot be a ground to revoke exemptions available to such informations.
It said that the appellant's view that such conditions did exist which warranted disclosure of the information did not pass the test.
