Hello Experts,
In my pending case against my husband and his family as mentioned earlier in this forum here https://www.lawyersclubindia.com/forum/details.asp?mod_id=208473&offset=1 , I went ahead and submitted an RTI Application to Income Tax Department ,Bangalore under whose jurisdiction my husbands PAN number falls. I requested the CPIO to furnish the income details of my husband for past two years so that I can use that information to strengthen my claim that he is earning some salary and is not jobless as claimed by him.
The repective CPIO rejected my application citing that as per the Supreme court order in the case Girish Ramchandra Deshpande vs Cen.Information Commr.& Ors on 3 October, 2012
“The question for consideration is whether the aforesaid information sought by the Appellant can be treated as ‘personal information’ as defined in clause (j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act. It may be pertinent to mention that this issue came up before the Full Bench of the Commission in Appeal No.CIC/AT/A/2008/000628 (Milap Choraria v. Central Board of Direct Taxes) and the Commission vide its decision dated 15.6.2009 held that “the Income Tax return have been rightly held to be personal information exempted from disclosure under clause
(j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act by the CPIO and the Appellate Authority, and the appellant herein has not been able to establish that a larger public interest would be served by disclosure of this information. This logic would hold good as far as the ITRs of Shri Lute are concerned. I would like to further observe that the information which has been denied to the appellant essentially falls in two parts – (i) relating to the personal matters pertaining to his services career; and (ii) Shri Lute’s assets & liabilities, movable and immovable properties and other financial aspects. I have no hesitation in holding that this information also qualifies to be the ‘personal information’ as defined in clause (j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act and the appellant has not been able to convince the Commission that disclosure thereof is in larger public interest.”
However I found out that in one similar such case (Smt. Sunita Jain vs. Pawan Kumar Jain and others) MP High Court said that irrespective of exemption of information under Section 8 of RTI Act, a wife is entitled to know the details of salary of her husband. In the case the wife was claiming maintenance from the husband wherein the quantum of maintenance being awarded to the wife was disputable on account of amount of maintenance being paid to the wife.
"That while dealing with the Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act , we cannot lose sight of the fact that the appellant and the respondent No.1 are husband and wife and as a wife she is entitled to know what remuneration the respondent No.1 is getting."
My question is :-
1. Is there any recent judgment regarding any such similar case which I can cite in my First Appeal against the RTI response.
2. In my case , Husband is privately employed( unlike in Smt. Sunita Jain vs. Pawan Kumar Jain and others where the husband was employed in government organization ie BSNL ) , so is there a chance that my appeal can be rejected on this basis .
3. Is there any other case reference that can be used to cite as the CPIO is considering wife as third party despite the marriage is in force.
Waiting for the expert opinion .Thank You.
