The Supreme Court has rejected the plea of an RTI applicant seeking a copy of the report submitted by a judges’ committee that conducted an in-house probe into the allegations of massive amounts of cash found from the residence of then Delhi High Court judge Justice Yashwant Varma on March 15.

The application for a copy of the three-member panel’s report was rejected on May 21 by Himani Sarad, the central public information officer of the Supreme Court, on a request made by advocate Amritpal Singh Khalsa through a Right to Information query.

The applicant had also sought a copy of the correspondence sent by then Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna to the President and the Prime Minister.

The information officer had rejected the applicant’s plea citing a 2019 judgment of the apex court in the Supreme Court vs Subhash Chandra Agarwal case wherein it had ruled that such information cannot be divulged in the interest of “independence of judiciary, proportionality test, fiduciary relationship, invasion of the right to privacy and breach of duty of confidentiality…” in terms of Section 8(1) and Section 11(1) of the RTI Act.