02 January,2017 09:04 AM IST | | Agencies
Were views of the Chief Economic Advisor and the Finance Minister taken before the sudden announcement of demonetisation of high-value currency notes by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8?
Arun Jaitley and (Right) Arvind Subramanian. Pic/Twitter
New Delhi: Were views of the Chief Economic Advisor and the Finance Minister taken before the sudden announcement of demonetisation of high-value currency notes by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8? The Reserve Bank of India feels this query cannot be answered under the Right to Information Act as it does not come under the definition of information under the transparency law.
The applicant wanted to know whether the "views of Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley were taken before announcement was made."
"Query is in the nature of seeking opinion from CPIO which is not defined as information as per Section 2(f) of the RTI Act," the RBI said in response to the RTI query.
Asked whether the information sought will fall under "seeking opinion" from the CPIO, former Chief Information Commissioner A N Tiwari said, "No. It does not. It is a fact sought by an RTI applicant. The CPIO cannot say an opinion has been sought from him."
The query was also sent to the Prime Minister's Office and the Finance Ministry but it remained unanswered even after 30 days of filing of the RTI application.
The applicant had also sought to know the designation and the names of officials who were consulted before scraping the old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes.
