JOTI PRASAD SHARMA Vs. ADDITIONAL CIVIL JUDGE DEHRADUN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN a suit filed by the petitioner against the State of Uttar Pradeah for an injunction restraining it from realising an amount under a forest contract, the petitioner applied for inspection and production of certain documents in the possession of the State Government and its officers IN opposition to the application, the State claimed privilege in res-pect of the documents and two affidavits were filed before the trial court, one by the Conservator of Forests (Annexure 2 to the counter affidavit) and the other by the Chief Conservator of Forest (Annexure 3 to the counter affidavit) The application was rejected by the trial court by its order of March 17, 1962 (Annexure K to the writ petition) by the following order: "17-3-62 283/C2 Affidavit filed by the defendant, along with this affidavit an application has been made on behalf of the defendant that the plaintiff he not allowed to INspect the file A perusal of Section 123 of the INdian Evidence Act makes it clear that it is for the Head of the Department to permit or not to permit giving in evidence any document which are unpublished official record relating to the affairs of the State. The affidavit filed today proves that the documents which are claimed as secret are unpublished official records relating to the affairs of the State. IN view of the affidavit the documents cannot be tendered into evidence 282/C2 is therefore allowed."

(2.) THE petitioner is aggrieved by the order and applies for certiorari

(3.) IT would, therefore seem that if the documents related to questions of public policy, they could be said to relate to the affairs of the State. Now, in the instant rase all that the trial court had before it were the affidavits of the Chief Conservator of Forests and the Conservator of Forests and those affidavits merely said that the file contained several letters written by the Head of the Department to the subordinate officers of the department and vice versa and between that department and other departments and they were, therefore unpublished official records and were secrets of the State They further stated that the account books and audit reports were unpublished official records and were secrets of the State IT is difficult to say that these averments in the affidavits constitute material from which it can he inferred that the documents in question refer to affairs of the State, The averments merely came to this that there are several letters on the files which have been written by certain authorities to other authorities Nothing is disclosed as to the character of the letters from which it can be inferred that they relate to affairs of the State. Moreover, the affidavits have not been made bv the Secretary of the Department. The Supreme Court in the aforesaid case expressly pointed out that having regard to the seriousness of the question for determining whether in a given set of circumstances the claim to privilege should he upheld it was necessary that- "the privilege should be claimed generally by the Minister in charge who is political head of the department concerned; if not, the Secre tary of the department who is the departmen tal head should make the claim; and the claim should always be made in the form of an affi davit When the affidavit is made bv the Secretary the Court, may in a proper case, re quire an affidavit of the Minister himself. The affidavit should show that each document in question has been carefully read and con sidered, and the person making the affidavit is satisfied that its disclosure would lead to pub lic injurv If there are a series of documents included in a file it should appear from the affidavit that each one of the documents, whose disclosure is objected to has been duly con sidered bv the authority concerned"