The Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) has no jurisdiction to comment on the utilisation of MPLADS funds by MPs as the scope of the Right To Information (RTI) Act is limited to providing access to information under the control of public authorities, the Delhi High Court has held.

The court expunged certain remarks made by the CIC while dealing with an RTI application seeking information pertaining to utilisation of funds under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS), and said the authority has no jurisdiction to comment adversely upon the functioning of any public authority.

It, however, retained the CIC's direction for disclosure of MP-wise, constituency-wise and work-wise details of the funds.

In its order, the CIC had observed that some MPs were "deliberately accumulating" their MPLADS funds for the last year of their term to gain advantage at the time of the next elections and suggested the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to prevent this "abuse" of the funds, and implement the guidelines for distributing the money equally for each year of the five-year term.

"The Ld. (learned) CIC has no jurisdiction to comment upon the utilization of funds by the Members of Parliament under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS). The scope of the RTI Act is only to ensure that information sought for under the RTI Act is dissipated in order to secure access to information under the control of public authorities," said Justice Subramonium Prasad in an order passed last month.

"Therefore, the observations made by the Ld. CIC commenting upon as to how the Members of Parliament are utilizing the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds have to be expunged," the court ordered.

The court's order came on a challenge by the Centre's Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation against the CIC order.

The appellant contended that the CIC exceeded its jurisdiction by commenting upon the action taken by MPs in spending MPLADS funds.

The court noted that as per section 18 of the RTI Act, the CIC can only deal with issues relating to the information sought or any other issue which leads to dissemination of the information.

"The portion of paragraph Nos.62 and 63 of the Impugned Order dated 16.10.2018 to the extent of observations made by Ld. CIC regarding utilization of Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds and the abuse of MPLADS funds stand eschewed," the court said.

"However, the portion whereby the Ld. CIC has directed the public authority under Section 19(8)(a)(iii) of RTI Act to publish MP-wise, Constituency wise and work-wise details of the funds is retained," it said.

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