Sixty-three years after Independence, Calcutta High Court, or at least its Public Information Officer (PIO), apparently feels that it is not under the control of the President of India or the government of India, since it has been set up under Letters Patent from the English monarch during the British Raj.
This astonishing argument was made by the PIO of the High Court, Mr Imran Hafiz, in a submission to the Central Information Commission while contending that the court does not come under the jurisdiction of the transparency panel. The CIC, however, rejected this argument outright.
In his submission dated 30 August, 2010, the PIO, quoting the RTI Act, said to qualify as the “appropriate government exercising jurisdiction over a public authority (the High Court in this case), this must be a public authority which is established, constituted, owned, controlled or substantially financed by funds directly or indirectly by (i) Central Government (ii) State Government.” “He (PIO) submitted the High Court of Calcutta was not constituted by the Central Government or even under the Constitution of India but by Her Majesty the Queen of England under Letters Patent dating from the time of Queen Victoria,” the then Chief Information Commissioner, Mr Wajahat Habibullah, said in his order issued in this regard. As per Article 246 of the Constitution, the PIO argued, the High Court is not under the control of President of India or the Indian government.
Rejecting the argument, Mr Habibullah said: “In the context of the present when so-called Majesties have ceased to exist and have been succeeded within India or from outside by the Sovereign Democratic Republic of India… any claim of any public authority in India to have established by authority other than those mentioned under the RTI cannot be accepted”. Legal luminaries supported this contention, noting that after the Constitution came into force, the entire judiciary came under it.
