Sarthak Umang
Published on: 15 November 2022 at 20:54 IST
Next week, the Supreme Court, is expected to launch its online Right to Information (RTI) portal, making it convenient for anyone to access information about the top court. Till now, RTI requests for the Supreme Court were filed and sent via postal mail.
However, recently the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud announced the decision in a case involving the online RTI portal for high courts and lower courts.
The Chief Justice of India (CJI) was certain that the Supreme Court should set the bar high and that it might not be appropriate to give judicial instructions to the high courts and district courts when the top court is lacking in the relevant area itself.
It was stated by the CJI, “We are most likely to launch the online RTI portal next week. We are completely ready. Some security audits were there. We will launch it next week,”
Furthermore, CJI added: “So for the high courts to be concerned, we have to lead from the front and then we can push them on the administrative side. We can only ask them to do something after we have done it.”
After three weeks, the court scheduled a hearing for the petition and assured the petitioners’ Advocate that the Supreme Court’s RTI site would be operational by that time. Last week as well, an plea was taken up by the bench chaired by CJI Chandrachud related to seeking online RTI portal.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan represented the petitioners in that case, which was brought by two law students who asked for the creation of an online RTI portal for the Supreme Court.
When that matter was taken up, the CJI had told Bhushan that, “The RTI portal is ready and it can go live at any time now… In fact, it will make our lives easier too. You can receive queries online and they can be answered conveniently. Otherwise, there are postal communications and they have to be physically placed before the competent authority.”
After Bhushan stated satisfaction with the steps taken by the court, the bench had wrapped up the petition, recording in its order: “The online portal of the Supreme Court for streamlining the responses under the Right to Information Act, 2005 is practically ready for being launched. In this view of the matter, the grievance of the petitioners has been duly met. The petition is accordingly disposed of.”
CJI DY Chandrachud is also chairman of e-committee, which promotes the adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by the Indian judicial system. Its main purpose is to serve automating processes to make information more accessible to its stakeholders.
The Supreme Court stated that the office of the Chief Justice of India would fall under the purview of the law in a 2019 decision, calling it “undebatable” that it is a public body under the RTI Act.
“The Supreme Court of India, which is a ‘public authority’, would necessarily include the office of the Chief Justice of India and the judges in view of Article 124 of the Constitution. The office of the Chief Justice or for that matter the judges is not separate from the Supreme Court, and is part and parcel of the Supreme Court as a body, authority and institution,” it had held.