This commission maintains that both the letter and spirit of the Act 2017 dictate the disclosure of certified copies, LPC and leave details, as requested by the Appellant in para 2 of this Order. Public interest dictates that the certified copies of the contracts for the posts cannot be withheld on the grounds of privacy as it this information is critical to determine the level of transparency and fairness adopted in the recruitment process.
It is pertinent to mention here that this commission has earlier settled the issue, in Appeal No 1198-07/21, Ameer Waseem Khan Vs Pakistan Stone Development Company, that blanking out personal information from records, for the purpose of sharing them with citizens in compliance of the Act 2017 does not tantamount to tampering with the record. This argument does not hold water. The commission held that it is not unlawful to sever parts of documents for the purpose of sharing record under the Act. This commission maintained that if the public interest warrants the disclosure of a report, though some of its part may contain information which should be exempted from disclosure on reasonable grounds, those parts can be severed and the rest should be made public as required under Section 16 (1) (i) of the Act.