Information Obtained Through RTI Need Not Necessarily Reliable: Supreme Court

An apex bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Sanjiv Khanna made this observation while hearing an appeal against an order of the Allahabad High Court (Ashish Kumar Saxena vs State of UP).

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New Delhi:  The Supreme Court on Friday said the information obtained through the Right to Information (RTI) Act need not necessarily be reliable and the lawyers should refrain from citing the same as authorities while arguing cases.

An apex bench of Justices AM Khanwilkarand Sanjiv Khanna made this observation while hearing an appeal against an order of the Allahabad High Court (Ashish Kumar Saxena vs State of UP).

“Do not cite an RTI reply. It is not very reliable as per our experience. If the letter ends with some other authority, the reply is something completely different,” Bar and Bench quoted Justice AM Khanwilkar as saying.

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The order under challenge before the apex court was in the context of a demolition process.

The appellant informed the apex court that he has an RTI reply from the development authority which states the master plan demarcates it as residential.

The apex court bench was, however, not inclined to accept the same.

Submitting that illegal demolition was carried out by the authorities in their privately owned land, the plea stated that the Gorakhpur Development Authority carried out demolition on their land and added if the process is not stopped then six families with 25 persons in total will lose their shelter.

"Do not cite RTI documents,” the apex court said.

The matter will be next heard in August.