Details of the assets and wealth of Rajya Sabha members shall not be placed in the public domain, the Ethics Committee of the Upper House has ruled.

The Committee, however, has said details of assets and liabilities of a member can be accessed by any person after getting written permission from Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha as per the Declaration of Assets and Liabilities Rules, 2004.

Replying to an RTI application, the Rajya Sabha said that Chairman of the House had directed to examine the feasibility of placing information contained in the Register of declaration of assets and liabilities of the members on the website of the House and sought a report from the Ethics Committee.

"The committee considered the issue in its meeting...and unanimously felt that sub-rule 4(4) of Rule 4 of the Assets and Liabilities Rules lays down an adequate provision for making available the information...to any person with the written permission of Chairman Rajya Sabha, thus when any request is received under the said rule the same could be provided after due processing," the reply said.

In reply to activist S C Agrawal, Public Information Officer Sunita Sekaran said the considered view of the Ethics Committee was that since any person could ask for information of the Register, there appears no need to place the same on the website.

The Central Information Commission had also taken the same view on placing asset details of information commissioners in the public domain but later, in a voluntary move, it posted the details about each information commissioner on its website.