A critique of the Supreme Court judgment regarding the fee to be charged under the RTI Act
30 Mar, 2018
Petitions were filed challenging the Rules framed under Section 28 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (in short “the Act”) by the Allahabad High Court and other public authorities. The Supreme Court heard the learned counsel for the parties and observed as under in respect of the various issues.
Issue No 1: The charges for the application fee and per page charges for the information supplied should be reasonable.
View of the SC:
- As a normal Rule, the charge for the application should not be more than Rs.50/- and for per page information should not be more than Rs.5/-.
- However, exceptional situations may be dealt with differently.
- This will not debar revision in future, if situation so demands.
Issue No 2: The petitioner argued against requiring of disclosure of motive for seeking the information.
View of the SC:
- No motive needs to be disclosed in view of the scheme of the Act.
Issue No 3: The petitioner argued against the requirement in the Allahabad High Court Rules, for permission of the Chief Justice or the Judge concerned to the disclosure of information.
View of the SC:
- The said requirement will be only in respect of information which is exempted under the scheme of the Act.
Issue No 4: As regards the objection that under Section 6(3) of the Act, the public authority has to transfer the application to another public authority if information is not available
View of the SC:
- The said provision should normally be complied with except where the public authority dealing with the application is not aware as to which other authority will be the appropriate authority.
Issue No 5: As regards Rules 25 to 27 of the Allahabad High Court Rules which debar giving of information with regard to the matters pending adjudication.
View of the SC:
- Rules 25 to 27 may be read consistent with Section 8 of the Act, more particularly sub-section (1) in Clause (J) thereof. Wherever rules do not comply with the above observations, the same be revisited based on mandate of the Act which must be complied with.
Positives coming out of the judgment
- This order fixes the limits of the fee which can be demanded by a public authority. Thus, the arbitrary demand of application fee and charges per page by the different public authorities for the information supplied would now be laid to rest.
- The question whether the RTI Act permits disclosure of motive for demanding the information should be allowed has been answered for once and for all.
What the judgment missed out
- In respect of section 6 (3) of the Act which requires that the public authority has to transfer the application to another public authority if information is not available, the Supreme Court has opened a way for not passing on the application to the holder of the information by providing an exception. The SC observation reads, “… except where the public authority dealing with the application is not aware as to which other authority will be the appropriate authority”. If one arm of the government does not know about the functioning of the other arm of the government, how can a citizen be expected to know who would hold the information? Every arm of the government is bound to assist the RTI applicant to provide the information or lead him to the source of it.
- The Supreme Court has held that “Rules 25 to 27 may be read consistent with Section 8 of the Act”. It appears that the facts were not put up to the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the right perspective as this observation has serious repercussions. When there are provisions already in existence for exempting information from disclosure as per section 8 of the RTI Act, why should Allahabad High Court be allowed to have a separate set of rules? This duplication of rules would be a cause of confusion and ought to have been nipped in the bud, lest all public authorities start making their set of rules as per their own interpretation of the RTI Act, 2005.
- If the second highest court of the land makes RTI rules which are grossly unfair and against the spirit of disclosure, the least expected from the Supreme Court was a stricture or at least an observation which would show what the position of the highest court on the issue of transparency. Sadly, the SC has missed this opportunity as such a reflexion is conspicuous by its absence in the judgment. The fact that it has taken almost seven years for the judgment to be delivered on such a simple although very important issue would disappoint a lot of public spirited persons.
- The fee charged from the RTI applicants is meagre and is not a source of revenue for the government. Through a comprehensive set of rules, the Central Government has fixed an application fee of Rs 10/- and a per page fee of Rs 2/- for providing the information. With different public authorities having different fee rules, the RTI Applicants have to face a lot of difficulty in finding out the quantum of fee payable. This judgment of Supreme Court does not go into the maze of confusion caused by multiple rates. Instead of capping the fee at Rs 50 and Rs 5/-, the Supreme Court could have taken the initiative of making the Central Government RTI fee rates applicable to all the public authorities across the country. One nation - One RTI Fee Rule - would have caused a uniformity in India.
- The Supreme Court judgment is silent about the other RTI fee rates like for information to be provided through a CD, inspection, cost of model etc. Do the petitioners need to knock at the doors of the court again?
The solution for the above can be provided only by the Apex Court. It would be worth to file a review petition before the Supreme Court to remove the errors and make this judgment truly monumental. Hope it would not take another seven long years. Are the petitioners listening?
For the text of the judgment, please refer to the link - http://www.rtifoundationofindia.com/circular/sc_15.pdf