The RBI has filed a writ petition at the Delhi High Court saying disclosing the names of defaulters would be a violation of their confidentiality.

A judgement on 29 May could well change how confidentiality is looked at in India, especially in the context of the Right to information Act (RTI). The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has challenged an order by the Central Information Commission (CIC) asking the central bank to disclose names of the top 100 industrialists who have defaulted on loan repayments, reported the Mint today.

The RBI has filed a writ petition at the Delhi High Court saying disclosing the names of defaulters would be a violation of their confidentiality. The RBI had declined to give out the names after an RTI was filed by P P Kapoor on 16 August 2010. After this the CCI asked RBI to disclose the names, in reply to which RBI has now filed the petition.

The Commission also directed the central bank to post on its website complete information on all such industrialists as part of suo motu disclosure mandated under section four of the RTI Act before December 31 and asked it to update it every year.

Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi had earlier said in his judgement that information of such nature held by RBI was confidential in nature. But, "information about industrialists who are loan defaulters of the country may put pressure on such persons to pay their dues. This would have the impact of alerting citizens about those who are defaulting in payments and could also have some impact in shaming them," he said.

Mint reports, RBI had said in its petition that it circulates a list containing details of non-suit filed accounts of defaulters of more than Rs 1 crore and a list of willful defaulters of Rs 25 lakh and above only among banks and financial institutions for their confidential use.

The High Court judgement will be important to see how much information can be provided by a regulator in India under certain circumstances.