Legal Cases

v. Bank of Maldives (Salary Details) – Supreme Court Decision

Outcome: Partial win

• The Supreme Court ruled that Bank of Maldives (BML) does fall within the definition of "state institute" outline in the RTI Act and therefore must abide by all the obligations under the RTI Act
• The Supreme Court ruled that the salary details of BML's employees do not have to be disclosed because =BML operates in a competitive environment and the disclosure of their salary details would cause harm to their business interests
• However, the Supreme Court's decision does not acknowledge that the requested information is also required to be proactively disclosed under Section 37 (k) of the RTI Act, leaving questions about whether BML is required to abide by this specific clause

v. State Electric Company (Salary Details) – ONGOING

• In response to an RTI Request complaint, the Information Commissioner in 2021 decided that the salary details must be disclosed by STELCO. Instead of complying with the decision of the Information Commissioner, the company chose to appeal the decision at the High Court.
• However, when the company appealed the case at the High Court, they filed the case at the court directly against me, without the ICO even being a party to the case. I appealed the decision of the High Court registrar but was refused. The ICO also eventually became a party to the case as an amicus curiae.
• When the High Court proceedings first began, the lawyers hired by STELCO did not show up to court, and the case was thrown out. However, the STELCO in-house lawyers re-appealed the case at the high court (again, directly against me), and the court registered it again.
• Our lawyers argued that such cases cannot be lodged against the information seeker when it is the decision of the information commissioner that is being appealed. However, despite the efforts of the lawyers and despite the judges questioning about how it is done in other countries, the judges in their verdict, did not elaborate on the issue of the case being appealed against the information seeker.
• Now, both ICO and STELCO have filed separate appeals at the Supreme Court:
• ICO is appealing the strange decision by the judges to include a clause from the RTI Act in the court decision to imply that the decision of the High Court judges in RTI Cases cannot be appealed further to the Supreme Court. ICO has also appealed for the court to conclude that court cases must be appealed against the Information Commissioner and not the information seeker.
• STELCO is appealing the decision of the High Court for the company to disclose their salary details