CORPORATE UNDER RTI SCANNER

Tax statements of a corporate group may be given under the Right To Information (RTI) Act as its privacy clause is limited to individu als and does not extend to organiza tions, feels chief information commis sioner Wajahat Habibullah.

"We have given a decision that tax details of political parties can be dis closed under the Act. Corporate groups are more or less similar organizations.
The privacy clause in the RTI Act sec tion 8(1)(j) deals with privacy of "indi viduals" but does not extend to organi sations. But the disclosure has to be decided on basis of merit in each case," he said.

However, he made it clear that such information cannot be sought directly from the private business groups but from a government department which holds it.

In a recent decision, information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi has directed the incometax department to provide tax statements of Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre, Escorts Ltd, Big Apple Clothing (P) Ltd, AAA Portfolio and promoters Naresh Trehan and Rajan Nanda to an appli cant.

"Though it is not necessary, the appellant has also shown that a larger public interest of increasing public rev enue and reducing corruption may be served by disclosure of the informa 1 tion, which would outweigh any harm to any protected interest," Gandhi ruled.

The decision of the commission came while hearing the plea of one t Rakesh Gupta whose application seek l ing assessment records of the Escorts c Group and its promoters between i 19982006 from the Income Tax department was rejected.

The department rejected the disclo sure citing five sections of the RTI Act which allow withholding of informa tion if it has been forbidden to be pub lished by court, is held in fiduciary capacity, could impede the process of investigation, is a personal information with no relation to public activity and relates to commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property.

Rejecting the grounds, Gandhi said it is extremely unlikely that there would be any information relating to 2005, which if revealed in 2009 could harm the competitive position of any of the third parties.