Tag: Tushar Mehta

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered listing of a bunch of petitions by mega banks including SBI and HDFC questioning a court mandate to provide customer and commercial information to RTI querists to a bench headed by Justice L N Rao, which had ruled that the RBI was bound to provide information sought about operations of banks under RTI.

Agreeing with advocate Prashant Bhushan, a bench of Justices S Abdul Nazeer and Krishna Murari ordered that since a bench headed by Justice Rao had dealt with the issue at length and returned a verdict, it would be in the fitness of things to list the fresh pleas by the banks before the same bench.

The leading banks have moved the SC questioning the efficacy of subjecting them to RTI and said, “banking operations and the financial transactions, including the details of individual accounts, are held in confidence by the banks and that the SC judgment would seriously jeopardise the confidential clauses applicable to the banking operations under various statutes.”

On April 29 this year, a bench headed by Justice L N Rao had dismissed applications by major banks, including SBI and HDFC, for recalling the SC’s six-year-old judgment directing the banking regulator RBI to provide information under RTI about functioning of banks under the Act. Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi and K V Vishwanathan had argued –

“How can the bank breach the trust and faith of the account holder just because a RTI activist desires to know what another person’s bank balance is, or what credit lines he has sought for his business empire for a confidential future venture? No one is against transparency in banking operations.

But, why should the banks, mandated by statute to maintain confidentiality, reveal information in breach of account holders’ trust and reveal future business plans to rivals, who could get the information by employing an RTI activist’s services?”

“We know how and who would use the RTI to seek information about business rivals. If the banks reveal to which sector loans are being given, then there will be no commercial confidentiality for any future project envisioned by an industrial house. A nine-judge bench of the SC has ruled that individual privacy is a part of right to life. Should account holders in banks not enjoy privacy about their bank accounts,” they asked.

Bhushan strongly resisted the fresh move by banks to wriggle out of their obligations to provide information sought under RTI through the RBI.