Delhi High Court Sets Aside CIC Direction to Compile Judge-Wise Data on Delayed Judgments

Court sets aside the information commission’s direction

The Delhi High Court has allowed a petition filed by its Public Information Officer and set aside a 2011 order of the Central Information Commission directing the officer to locate and supply information about judgments delivered more than two months after arguments concluded. In a decision dated 29 October 2026, Justice Amit Mahajan held that the Right to Information Act, 2005 does not require a public authority to create a new judge-wise compilation that it neither maintains nor is legally required to maintain.

The ruling does not suggest that information already held by a court can be withheld merely because it concerns judicial administration. Its narrower holding is that an information officer cannot be directed to calculate delays across case files and assemble a new dataset when the requested record does not exist in that form. The Court accordingly quashed the Commission’s direction of 26 May 2011.

How the request arose

The respondent, former judicial officer P. D. Gupta, submitted an RTI application on 2 April 2009. He referred to an earlier petition in which arguments had concluded on 31 July 2007 but judgment was delivered on 2 May 2008. He sought complete details of cases heard by the judge concerned, either singly or on a Division Bench, where pronouncement occurred more than two months after the conclusion of arguments.

The Public Information Officer replied that no such data was specifically maintained or compiled. The First Appellate Authority upheld that response. In a second appeal, however, the Central Information Commission considered that monthly reports from Court Masters to the Chief Justice meant the information should be available. It directed the officer to locate relevant records and provide copies, limiting the exercise to the two years preceding the application.

The High Court stayed the Commission’s order in October 2011. The interim protection was subsequently made absolute, and the writ petition remained pending until the present decision. The judgment records that the respondent did not file a counter-affidavit disputing the Public Information Officer’s statement that the requested compilation was not maintained.

The statutory distinction between records and fresh analysis

The Court examined Sections 2(f), 2(j) and 3 of the Right to Information Act. These provisions define information and the right to obtain material held by or under the control of a public authority. Their combined effect, the Court explained, is to secure access to available and existing information, subject to statutory exemptions. They do not impose an independent obligation to manufacture an answer by processing records in a new manner.

Justice Mahajan relied on the Supreme Court’s decision in Central Board of Secondary Education v. Aditya Bandopadhyay, which distinguishes access to existing data, analyses and statistics from a demand to collect or collate information that is not part of the public authority’s records. The Court also referred to the Delhi High Court Division Bench ruling in The Registrar, Supreme Court of India v. Commodore Lokesh K. Batra, which rejected a comparable obligation to compile information in a requested format.

The Commission had reasoned that the requested material should be available because Court Masters supplied monthly lists concerning reserved judgments. The High Court rejected that inference. An administrative practice of transmitting a report is not proof that the report is retained indefinitely or that a judge-wise historical register is kept.

What the confidential monthly reports actually required

The Court considered its office order of 4 April 2003, issued following the Supreme Court’s directions in Anil Rai v. State of Bihar. Court Masters were required to furnish, in sealed covers, monthly lists of matters in which judgments remained reserved and lists of judgments pronounced during the month. Those lists were to be placed before the Chief Justice through the Registrar for administrative attention to pending matters.

Neither the Supreme Court’s directions nor the High Court’s office order required preservation of those lists year after year or their compilation by individual judge. Producing the particular information sought would therefore require examining all cases heard by a specified judge, identifying relevant hearing and pronouncement dates, calculating intervals and preparing a fresh list. The Court treated that process as new collection and collation, not simple disclosure of a held record.

Public interest and the operative result

The Court expressly recognised that timely delivery of judgments is a matter of public concern. It nevertheless held that public interest does not convert non-existent information into a record that an authority must create. The Commission’s assumption that material should exist could not substitute for evidence that it was maintained, especially when the officer’s account was supported by an affidavit and remained uncontroverted.

The writ petition was allowed and the Central Information Commission’s 26 May 2011 order was set aside. The decision leaves unaffected the ordinary right to seek identifiable existing court records under the RTI framework, subject to applicable law. It also does not relax judicial obligations concerning timely pronouncement. Its practical lesson is that RTI requests should distinguish specific records already held by a public authority from bespoke calculations or compilations requiring new administrative work.