Case of false and delayed RTI information dealt by Consumer Court
8 May, 2013An application was filed with the Teacher Recruitment Board (TRB) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to get the answers of the economics exam as part of the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET). When the answers received in the reply were tested against the blue print released by the TRB, it was found that in the case of three questions, two answers were given for each question and in the case of another set of three questions, no answer was provided.
The applicant, then, filed another application under the RTI Act regarding the confusion over the questions and also sought details on appointment of teachers through caste-based reservation. As the official from TRB failed to respond within the stipulated time, the applicant filed a petition in the Karur consumer court and sought compensation for mental agony that he had to suffer contending that if he would have received the information on time, he could have landed the job.
The consumer court bench ruled that the non-furnishing of information amounted to deficiency of service and ordered the TRB official to pay a fine of Rs. 5,000 as compensation and Rs. 500 as litigation cost to the applicant.