Early Times Report
Jammu, Mar 25 : In an interesting case the Income Tax department has denied to provide information under State Right to Information Act (RTI) to an RTI applicant who sought details of the total income of a person who happens to be her husband.
The IT department Public Information Officer denied to reveal the information on the grounds that the information sought falls under the ambit of 3rd party information and consent of the 3rd party (husband) is necessary.
The 3rd party denied his consent and subsequently the information could not be provided by the Public Information Officer. The RTI applicant filed 1st appeal before Joint Income tax Commissioner who upheld the orders of the PIO.
The case finally landed in State Information Commission (SIC) and the SIC also upheld the orders of the PIO as well as First Appellate Authority (FAA) ie Joint Income Tax Commissioner Jammu.
As per details available one Poonam Sharma w/o Ankush Magotra, C/o Vikas Sharma (Adv) Bar Room No.2, Table No.4, District Court Complex Janipur Jammu filed an application on 28-10-2013 before B.K. Raina, Income Tax Officer, Ward-2(1), Railhead Complex, Jammu, (State Public Information Officer), under section 6 of J&K RTI Act, 2009 where under she sought to know whether the income of Ankush Magotra S/o Krishan Kumar Magotra R/o 224, Hari Nagar, Patoli Morh, Old Janipur, Jammu, having Permanent Account No. AKQPM7734F is accessible to Income Tax; If reply to query (1) is in affirmative, how much of Income from all sources was disclosed and Tax deposited by Ankush Magotra for the financial year 2011-12 with your department. The applicant also sought a certified copy of Income Tax receipt issued by the IT department.
In his reply, Ankush Magotra submitted that the information called for has no relationship to any public activity or interest and it would cause unwarranted invasion of his privacy as per section 8(1)(i) of the J&K Right to Information Act,2009. So, he requested PIO not to provide the required information to the applicant.
The first and second appeals filed by the applicant were also dismissed and the decision of the PIO not to divulge the information sought by the applicant was upheld. |
