The Director General, Directorate General of Civil Defence is directed to provide the Appellant certified copies of all records available on his personal file within 7 working days of the receipt of this Order, with intimation to this office.
This commission holds that record generated during the course of service of an employee and placed on personal file of the employee is public record which should be made available to the employee concerned on his or her request.
This commission maintains that Annual Confidential Report, (ACR) cannot be treated as a secret document to the extent of its availability to the employee concerned after the enactment of the Right of Access to Information Act 2017. There is no absolute exemption from disclosure to any document in its entirety. Furthermore, public bodies cannot classify documents arbitrarily. if a document or a part of it is to be classified, the method of its classification is mentioned in Section 7 (f) of the Act.
The government employees have every right to see remarks recorded about their performance by their seniors as part of their official responsibilities. Section 24A (1) of the General Clauses Act 1897 requires civil servants to exercised their powers “reasonably, fairly, justly, and for the advancement of the purposes of the enactment”.
What is the harm in disclosing ACR to the employee concerned if ‘reasonable’, ‘fair’ and ‘just’ reasons have been recorded in the ACR by a relevant senior? On the other hand, how can government employees improve their performance if they do not know questions raised about their performance?
As the country graduates from post-colonial era where secrecy has been a norm and provision of information an exception after the insertion of Article 19-A into the Constitution and the enactment of the Right of Access to Information Act 2017, civil servants are expected to ensure that transparency becomes a norm and secrecy an exception, and that too on justifiable legal grounds. This commission holds that there are no justifiable grounds of withholding access to their own ACR from the employees.