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The Supreme Court today refused to pass any interim orders in a plea filed by The State Bank of India (SBI) and HDFC Bank seeking a stay on the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) directive which states that lenders must provide financially sensitive data under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. 

The application was disposed of by a bench of Justice LN Rao and Justice Hemant Gupta.  

The plea was filed since the two banks feared that the RBI directive could prove to be detrimental to their business and also compromise the confidentiality of their customers' information. 

"In view of the judgment in Jayantilal N Mistry case, the RBI is seeking disclosure of confidential and sensitive information of the applicant bank, including information of its employees and its customers, purportedly under the Right to Information Act, 2005, which are otherwise exempt under the provisions of Section 8 of said Act,", the plea said. 

Although the two lenders sought the direction against RBI, but they aimed for the top court's order that permitted the disclosure of such data. The plea further averred that this could potentially exploit the RTI Act to extract the information regarding the trade secrets and internal strengths of other successful banks.

Earlier the Supreme Court had restrained the central bank from disclosure under the RTI Act but the same got washed away when the Court refused to review the Jayantilal Mistry judgement.

On May 28, 2021 Solicitor general Tushar Mehta and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who appeared on behalf of SBI and HDFC Bank, had told the Court that disclosure of sensitive information such as inspection reports, risk assessment reports and annual financial inspection reports of banks would make the lenders vulnerable to rivals. 

Case Title: HDFC Bank v. Union of India & SBI v. CPIO | WP(C) 1159|2019