THE Supreme Court on Friday granted RBI “last opportunity” to withdraw its policy exempting the central bank from disclosing information, like annual inspection report on lenders, under the transparency law and cautioned that future violations would be “viewed seriously”.

The top court made clear that RBI was “duty bound to furnish all information relating to inspection reports and other material” under the Right to Information (RTI) Act except those which pertained to “matters of national economic interest”.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) undertook before the court that the disclosure policy will be deleted from the web-site.

The annual inspection of banks by RBI ascertains compliance of lenders on various parameters including recognition of Non Performing Assets (NPAs) or bad loans, capital framework and risk management. Based on the annual inspection, weaknesses are flagged to the banks for taking corrective action.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and M R Shah took strong note of the fact that RBI acted in contravention of its December 16, 2015 judgement and issued a new disclosure policy on its web-site on April 12 after it had reserved the verdict on a batch of contempt pleas.Under the new policy, RBI had directed various departments not to disclose information that was specifically asked to be given by the earlier judgement of the top court.

“The Respondents (RBI), in our opinion, have committed contempt of this court by exempting disclosure of material that was directed to be given by this court,” the bench said, while granting the last opportunity to the federal bank to rectify it. “Though we could have taken a serious view of the respondents (RBI) continuing to violate the directions issued by this court, we give them a last opportunity to withdraw the disclosure policy insofar as it contains exemptions which are contrary to the directions issued by this court.

“The Respondents (RBI) are duty bound to furnish all information relating to inspection reports and other material apart from the material that was exempted ...Of the judgement. Any further violation shall be viewed seriously by this court,” the bench held in its verdict. Taking serious view of the violation of its verdict, the bench said that there was an element of public policy in punishing civil contempt and “the administration of justice would be undermined if the order of any court of law could be disregarded with impunity”.