Wife Uses RTI to Find Out Husband's Salary Details

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posted on 1 year ago — updated on 1 second ago

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Sanju Gupta, the appellant in this particular case, filed an RTI application to acquire the details of her husband’s gross and taxable income for two financial years.

Filing for a divorce is a straining process whose economic dimension can sometimes get into tricky spots as assets are divided between the concerned parties. In a recent case of a seemingly turbulent divorce, a husband refused to divulge information regarding his income, forcing his wife to seek recourse through the Right To Information (RTI) Act.

Sanju Gupta, the appellant in this particular case, filed an RTI application to acquire the details of her husband’s gross and taxable income for two financial years, the Financial Express reported. It is poignant to note that such details are often necessary for deciding alimony, maintenance, etc. However, the appellant’s request for this information was denied by the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO), Income Tax Department office of the Income Tax Officer, Bareilly, after her husband did not consent to the same.

This decision led Gupta through a couple of appeals more. She first filed an appeal before the First Appellate Authority (FAA), which upheld the decision of the CPIO. The appellant then moved to file a second appeal with the Central Information Commission\ (CIC). The CIC, a body formed under the RTI Act, 2005, has jurisdiction spanning all Central Public Authorities. Its powers broadly relate to adjudication in second appeal for giving information, direction for record-keeping, etc. The CIC’s decisions are final and binding.

On Sepember 19, after going through precedents, the Commission instructed the CPIO to provide the appellant with details of her spouse’s net taxable income/gross income available with public authority within a period of 15 days.

There is an interesting exception to such decisions that stems from another statement that the CIC had given a few years earlier.

In a 2014 case. he CIC had stated that a public authority can not divulge certain details about a person’s finances even to their spouse under the RTI Act on the grounds of it being personal information. This is information related to deductions and expenditures from salary.

While a spouse’s salary is mandated for disclosure under the provisions of the transparency law, this does not apply to spending and other subtractions (like loan deductions, etc.).

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