Is Annual Confidential Report (ACR)

Is Annual Confidential Report (ACR)

of a public servant a 'personal' or 'public' document?

New Delhi, Feb7, 2012(PTI): The Delhi High Court today reserved its verdict on a plea seeking to declare that the performance appraisal reports of a public servant were not exempted under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and they can be shared under the transparency law. 

“The judgement is reserved,” a bench of Acting Chief Justice A K Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said. The court was hearing an appeal of RTI activist R K Jain against the order of a single judge which held the annual performance appraisal reports (APARs), previously known as ACRs, of a public servant were “personal information” under the RTI and hence, exempted from disclosure unless it was established a “larger public interest” warranted disclosure.

Prashant Bhushan, counsel for Jain, said “only those information, which relate to personal information ‘which has no relation to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of privacy of the individual”, is exempted from disclosure