citizens are to know what their Govt. is doing.

64. In R.K. Jain v. Union of India42 , this Court, while examining Section 123 of the Evidence Act, 1872, had paraphrased the earlier judgment of the Constitution Bench of this Court penned down by Fazal Ali, J. in S.P. Gupta (supra) (the first Judge’s case) in which the question of privilege against disclosure of correspondence between the Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, 41 [1976] QB 752 42 (1993) 4 SCC 119 Civil Appeal No. 10044 of 2010 & Ors. Page 76 of 108 Chief Justice of India and the Law Minister of the Union had arisen, in the following words: “41. [...] in a democracy, citizens are to know what their Govt. is doing. No democratic Govt. can survive without accountability and the basic postulate of accountability is that the people should have information about the functioning of the Govt. It is only if the people know how the Govt. is functioning and that they can fulfill their own democratic rights given to them and make the democracy a really effective participatory democracy. There can be little doubt that exposure to public scrutiny is one of the surest means of running a clean and healthy administration. By disclosure of information in regard to the functioning of the Govt. must be the rule and secrecy can be exceptionally justified only where strict requirement of public information was assumed. The approach of the court must be to alleviate the area of secrecy as much as possible constantly with the requirement of public interest bearing in mind all the time that the disclosure also serves an important aspect of public interest.”