Rise of RTI applications for Divorce and Maintenance Claims; CIC says that wife cannot seek details of IT Returns of the Husband

A Right to Information (RTI) application was filed by the wife to see details of income tax returns of her estranged husband. The Income Tax department had refused to provide the details on the ground that details of some other individual other than oneself will be considered exempted information under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act. The CIC Information Commissioner, Mr. Neeraj Gupta, stated that filing of such returns by an individual is not a ‘public activity’ and hence cannot be up for scrutiny and disclosure unless there is an involvement of a serious larger, public interest.

The commissioner mirrored the Supreme Court judgment (Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commission) which has held that such disclosure is against the section of the RTI Act unless there is a larger public interest. In this matter, the wife has not succeeded in establishing that the information sought is for a larger public purpose, the Commission held. However, CIC asked the Income Tax Department to consider providing the wife only the limited information of the last six years i.e. the numerical figure(s) of the 'gross income' of her husband for using the same to defend her maintenance case.

CIC becomes the scapegoat in Marital Discord issues In an article by the Economic Times in 2017, this concept of RTI being invoked due to marital discord came to the limelight. 

Estranged spouses were increasingly using the transparency law of RTI to either obtain more information about their partner’s infidelity to file divorce cases or to obtain maintenance for their children. The need to file an RTI application sometimes arises when the spouse is under the suspicion that there are certain hidden financial assets of their partner not disclosed to them. The spouse in doubt then approaches the government department where the husband or wife is employed to seek the relevant details. However, the RTI Act expressly forbids disclosure of “personal information” such as salary details. As a result, most such cases of marital disharmony reach the transparency watchdog, Central Information Commission (CIC).

Chief Information Commissioner of CIC, Mr. Bimal Julka, expressed in the article that there was a sharp increase in such cases before the Commission. Some cases are very heart-rending and one can sympathise with the complainants. In some instances, the wife had no source of income and had to support her school-going children and hence wanted information about the husband’s salary to claim maintenance.

In another case, a complainant turned to the CIC after the Income Tax Department refused to divulge information on the income tax returns filed by her husband, who had deserted her. She aimed to find

out his whereabouts through his IT returns. Due to such cases, the CIC had then taken a view on humanitarian grounds that the generic information from income tax returns should be given.

“So now we see if there is merit then we ask the department to divulge gross income so that fair maintenance can be sought from the court.” The CIC has since 2017 taken a liberal view, even as Section 8 (1) (j) of the RTI Act does not allow divulging personal information as reflected in the present case of 2020.