Union of India v. Namit Sharma (Review)

Review allowed: the directions and declarations of the principal judgment are recalled, and Sections 12(5) and 15(5) are declared not ultra vires.

The Commission works as the Act made it — Parliament's business, said the review, not the court's.

The Review Petitions were allowed and the directions and declarations of the principal judgment were recalled. The Court declared Sections 12(5) and 15(5) not ultra vires, and substituted six directions on how appointments are to be made and recorded.

• 13 September 2012 — *Namit Sharma v. Union of India*, (2013) 1 SCC 745: a two-judge bench read the Information Commissions as judicial tribunals and directed that they work in benches of two, one member being of judicial background (case page).
• The Union sought review; in April 2013 an interim stay let sitting Chief Information Commissioners remain in office while the review was pending.
• 3 September 2013 — this judgment, by the same bench (Patnaik and Sikri JJ.), confining itself to errors apparent on the record.

• The judicial-qualification requirement is recalled — the eligibility criteria in §§12(5) and 15(5) stand as enacted; reading judges-only into them was error.
• The two-member bench rule is relaxed — Commissions may be constituted and hear matters in broader combinations.
• Separation-of-powers ground: whether Commissions should have judicial members is a matter for Parliament to decide, not for the court to write into the statute.
• Sections 12(5) and 15(5) are not ultra vires. The eligibility criteria stand as Parliament enacted them.

• It is the reason commissions today sit with combinations that include no judicial member, without objection.
• It is a clean statement of the review jurisdiction's limits — even a wide reading of a statute cannot survive an error apparent on its face.
• For the appointment debates that recur (vacancies, tenure after the 2019 amendment), the review is the anchor: the design question belongs to Parliament.

The directions in the principal judgment requiring judicially qualified members and two-member benches are recalled; it is for Parliament to prescribe the composition of the Information Commissions.

Information Commission, review, Namit Sharma, bench composition

• Namit Sharma v. Union of India (SC 2012)

• Anjali Bhardwaj v. Union of India (SC 2019)

• Namit Sharma v. Union of India (SC 2012)

• Namit Sharma v. Union of India (SC 2012)
• Natural justice in Information Commission hearings (SC 2020)
• Khanapuram Gandaiah v. Administrative Officer (SC 2010)
• Judicial Academies under RTI — CIC (CIC 2020)
• Judicial-delay records — SC (SC 2023)

• All Supreme Court of India rulings in the corpus
• All RTI cases turning on §12
• All RTI cases turning on §15
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No, it is a review, not an overruling, and it does not disturb the RTI Act itself. But the recall was wide: paragraph 32 recalls the directions and declarations of the principal judgment, including its declaration that the Commission is a 'judicial tribunal'. What replaced them are six directions on how appointments are made and recorded.

Post-review, benches are not required to pair a judicial member; commissions have since functioned with varied compositions — your remedies run to the High Court under Article 226, not to the bench's shape.

The 2019 amendment and the RTI Rules, 2019 changed tenure and salaries; the composition question has remained with Parliament, as the review held — see Section 27 and Section 13.

Editorial summary · date and bench verified 27 August 2026 against indiankanoon.org/doc/47938967. Outcome wording, one holding bullet and one FAQ answer corrected 11 September 2026 after re-checking the judgment.