NEW DELHI: Prime Minister's Office ( PMO ) has turned down an RTI request seeking records related to its affidavit filed in the Allahabad High Court in response to a writ petition seeking a probe into controversial land deals made by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra on grounds of “confidentiality”.

Both the right to information request and the writ petition have been filed by Lucknow-based Nutan Thakur.

Thakur had filed a writ petition last year before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad HC seeking a probe into charges of irregular land deals involving Vadra that were leveled by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal.

It was dismissed by the Bench after the Centre submitted that the petition was based on general newspaper reports which cannot be treated as true.

In its affidavit, the PMO had termed the allegations regarding alleged irregular land deals between Vadra and real estate major DLF as "false, based on heresay and vexatious".

Thakur, through an RTI application, wanted to know all the file notings related to the PMO affidavit placed before the HC. She also wanted to know action taken after receiving her petition.

In it first reply in April, PMO claimed that since the matter is "sub-judice", records cannot be disclosed to her. She argued that such details can only be withheld when there is explicit order from the court for not disclosing them.

Later, the PMO in a reply on June 6 said, "The office, keeping in view the Supreme Court ruling, has sought exemption as the matter has been treated as confidential."

It quoted a Supreme Court order which said the exemption under section 8(1)(e) (of the RTI Act) is available not only in regard to information held by a public authority in a fiduciary capacity, but also to any information given or made available by a public authority to anyone else for being held in fiduciary capacity.

"In other words, anything given and taken in confidence expecting confidentiality to be maintained will be information available to a person in fiduciary capacity," it said.