Relative grading of officer's annual confidential reports during promotion held not to be personal information
The CIC has consistently held that the ACRs of an officer is in the nature of personal information and can be disclosed only to him and to none else. However, in the present case, the Appellant has not sought the copies of the ACRs. She has only wanted to know the manner in which the DPC evaluated and assessed the individual ACRs of the officers and arrived at the grading in each case. The disclosure of the final relative grading will not help; without the entire chart showing the complete assessment of every officer, it will not be clear how the officers have been assessed in a related matrix. It is without doubt that the relative grading of the ACRs is an important input in the final
decision of the DPC in recommending some officers and not recommending some others. As held by us in several similar cases in the past, in any examination or evaluation process, certain details about the successful or recommended candidates must be disclosed in order to ensure transparency in the selection process. Since the relative grading of the ACRs is the basis for recommending a certain officer for promotion, t
