New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Friday found that the office of the attorney general would not be a public authority and fall within the ambit the Right to Information Act (RTI).

A bench comprising chief justice G. Rohini and justice Jayant Nath set aside a verdict of Justice Vibhu Bakhru in 2015 which said that the office of the attorney general was a public authority and fell within the ambit of the RTI Act, 2005.

The Union government had appealed this ruling.

In March 2015, justice Bakhru, in a verdict, said that owing to the fact that the office of the attorney-general was constitutional in nature, the RTI would apply to it.

“...the role of the AGI is not limited to merely acting as a lawyer for the Government of India...the AGI is a constitutional functionary and is also obliged to discharge the functions under the Constitution as well as under any other law," the verdict had said.

The ruling from the two-judge bench comes nearly a year after the court reserved verdict in the case on 16 February 2016

During its arguments, the government had contended that relationship between the the government and its top law officer was privileged and could not be disclosed to the public.

The dispute originated after two RTI activists, Subhash Chandra Aggarwal and R.K. Jain, sought information from the attorney-general’s office.The two individuals questioned before the Delhi high court the ruling of the Central Information Commission which in December 2012 found that the office of the attorney general was not public authority.

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