Patna: A 12-year legal battle by Md Rizwan of Siwan has culminated in a landmark Patna high court verdict holding that torn or missing public records cannot be a ground for officials to refuse information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.A single bench of justice Rajkumar allowed Rizwan’s writ application, filed in 2016, and quashed a 15-year-old order of the state information commission, which had dropped his RTI plea for a certified copy of revenue register-II of his Raiyati land after the record was declared untraceable.Justice Rajkumar directed the district magistrate and revenue officials in Siwan to search for the missing register in courts and district record rooms within four weeks and reconstruct it if it could not be traced. If found torn, the document must be digitally enlarged by experts, the court ordered.The verdict, which has implications for RTI applicants across Bihar, was delivered on Aug 11 and came into the public domain on Thursday night.
