Tax Evasion Investigation By I.T. Department Is Public Information!

The Right to Information is a fundamental right under our constitution. The RTI took birth to fulfill this fundamental demand .Therefore, in my opinion , the law makers made explicit the overriding effect of this law on all other laws of the country, by introducing Chapter VI which contains Section 22 . The Said section states"

* "The provisions of this Act shall have effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent therewith contained in the Official Secrets Act, 1923, and any other law for the time being in force or in any instrument having effect by virtue of any law other than this Act."

Since the parliament passed a law and made explicit the weightage of the new law i.e RTI Act , there should not be any doubt about the preference of RTI over other law.

Going by the decision of Chief Information Commission , it seems that even CIC does not think so. The decision of the CIC in past is that in many cases related to , Income Tax , it disposed of the application rejecting the RTI application, but in one case of Pushpinder Paul Kaur Rani , CIC ruled that the investigation carried out by the DIT on Tax Evasion Petition is always an information in public interest. Thus , department is bound to supply the information regarding the result of investigation carried out.You can read the full decision here

A different View

Sri T.N Pandey, Former chairman of CBDT wrote an article in Financial Express on the subject with headline"RTI: Not applicable to I-T proceedings?". It is very nice article and the subject is made clear in lucid manner. The excerpt of the article is given below f