Uttarakhand HC orders Centre to release empanelment documents for cadre IFS officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi

Nainital (Uttarakhand) [India], September 5 (ANI): The Uttarakhand High Court has ordered the Central Government to provide Uttarakhand cadre IFS Officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi with documents related to his empanelment.

Specifically, the court has directed the respondents to disclose records concerning the process and decision-making of his empanelment at the level of the Joint Secretary, who made the decision on November 15, 2022.

The disclosure is to be limited to documents pertaining only to Chaturvedi’s empanelment.

A division bench of Chief Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Alok Kumar Verma passed these orders on September 3rd on a writ petition filed by the officer in which he was arguing his own case.

The order says, “Keeping in view that the petitioner has sought his own record, a direction is being given to the respondents to give the record relating to the process and decision making of the empanelment of the petitioner at the level of the Joint Secretary, who took the decision on November 15, 2022.”

The order clarified that “only the records relating to the petitioner’s empanelment shall be supplied to the petitioner.”

These orders are first of its kind passed by any Court regarding supply of documents related to empanelment to aggrieved officer.

Central Government had passed an order on November 15, in 2022, which had said that ‘Appointment Committee of Cabinet (ACC) has not approved’, empanelment of Sanjiv Chaturvedi for ‘holding the post of JS/equivalent at the Centre’.

In his petition, Chaturvedi cited his ‘consistent outstanding grading’, four presidential orders passed in his favour during his Haryana tenure, appreciation of his performance as Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) in AIIMS by the Union Health Ministry as ‘exemplary’ and various orders of the Uttarakhand High Court, Delhi High Court, as well as the Supreme Court, making favourable observations about his credentials.

He also claimed of being ‘relentlessly persecuted by powers that be, for years and years, for discharging his official duties honestly and fearlessly, in accordance with the law of land and the present petition is the result of a never-ending series of such events.’

Initially, he had filed a petition in the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) in December, 2022. However, the Petition was dismissed in May this year on the ground that, ‘disclosure of the records pertaining to ACC and CSB being confidential documents is prohibited as per Section 8(1)(i) of RTI Act.’

Chaturvedi challenged this order before Uttarakhand High Court in June, claiming that orders of Tribunal ‘has been passed on the basis of prima facie baseless, fictitious, factually incorrect and unsubstantiated submissions made’ by Central Government.

The petition mentioned that proviso of Section 8(1) (i) of RTI Act was completely ignored by the tribunal, which says that, ‘the decisions of Council of Ministers, the reasons thereof, and the material on the basis of which the decisions were taken shall be made public after the decision has been taken, and the matter is complete, or over.’