The Delhi high court on Thursday said that every citizen, under the Right to Information Act, is entitled to know about the donations made by the President of India.
“Every citizen is entitled to know as to how the money, which is collected by the state from him by exaction, has been utilised. Merely because the person making the donations happens to be the President of India, is no ground to withhold the said information,” Justice Vipin Sanghi said.
The court upheld the CIC’s order directing the President’s secretariat to make public the names of recipients of the donation, besides their addresses and the amount of donation given by the First Citizen. While dismissing the Centre’s plea against the May 4 order of the Central Information Commission saying that the information be provided to Nitish Kumar Tripathi, the court said, “The hon’ble President of India is not immune from the application of the Act (RTI). What is important is, that it is a public fund which is being donated by the President, and not his/her private fund placed at his/her disposal for being donated amongst the needy and deserving persons.”
Allowing Mr Tripathi’s plea, the CIC had asked Rashtrapati Bhavan to give him the details of the donations made by the President, within 15 days and upload the information on the official website of the President’s secretariat. “The donations made by the President of India cannot be said to relate to personal information of the President. It cannot be said that the disclosure of the information will cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of, either the President of India, or the recipient of the donation,” the court said.