Public Health Foundation of India comes under the RTI Act: CIC

NEW DELHI: The Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), an autonomous public private partnership project headed by the Prime Minister's cardiologist K Srinath Reddy, comes under the ambit of the RTI Act as it is substantial financed by the government, the CIC has held.

The PHFI came into existence in the year 2006 with an initial fund corpus of Rs 200 crore, in which government had contributed Rs 65 crore, the Central Information Commission noted.

It has on its board five senior officials -- Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission; P K Pradhan, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; V M Katoch, Secretary, Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research; T K A Nair, Advisor to the Prime Minister and R K Srivastava, Director General Health Services.

The PHFI had claimed before the CIC that although it places maximum information on its web site in public interest, it is not bound to reply to RTI application as it does not come under the transparency law.

It also said that the officials which are its board members are occupying the positions in "personal capacity."

Rejecting the argument, Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said it was difficult to assume that "senior public servants" can be on the board of PHFI, which has numerous interactions with the government, in private capacity.

"In fact, this would necessarily imply a conflict of interest. The Commission can only assume that such public servants must necessarily be acting on behalf of the Government -- when they are required to take executive decisions as members of the board -- in a public-private partnership (PPP) such as PHFI. Any other conclusion would be an improper slur on their integrity," he said.