Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat
There may be many people who would have been asked to pay exorbitant fees while seeking information under Right to Information Act (RTI). I am aware about many cases wherein information seekers have been asked to pay several thousand rupees as photocopying charges by the Government officers especially in Rural Development Department and other organizations which undertake developmental works. I won’t accuse only Government officials for asking exorbitant fees , but the RTI applicants are also responsible for asking information which consists of thousands of pages and PIO’s do get confused because the information asked is huge. To overcome this problem the remedy lies in the Right to Information Act (RTI) itself. Under Right to Information Act (both central and state RTI Act) one can ask for inspection of documents , records , official files , and even works.
Case detail :
In order to demoralize an information seeker from getting details about works executed by Irrigation & Flood Control (I&FC) department on the banks of river Jehlum from Sonwar to Chattabal veer in Srinagar , the department asked an information seeker to deposit a whopping amount of Rs 80,000 as photocopying fees which is charged @ Rs 2 per copy. An information seeker namely Mudassir Manzoor Shah a resident of Pamore in district Pulwama had filed an application under J&K RTI Act 2009 before Public Information Officer ( PIO) Irrigation &Flood Control Department Batmallo Srinagar through speed post on 27.01.2017 seeking following information:
i. Complete detail of payments made by Sub Division Sonwar for River banks both sides left and right from Pampore to Chattabal Veer.
ii. Allotment, Extension and Approvals
iii. Payment made fro Retaining Wall. Toe Walls and Pitching.
iv. Payment made for protection of bunds
v. Work period should be 2005 to 2014.
vi. Name of Contractor, work checking authority and payment issuing authority.
vii. Name and Address of your First Appellate Authority
The RTI application was responded by the Public Information Officer (PIO) Executive Engineer Irrigation &FC Division Srinagar on 24.03.2015 . The PIO in his reply stated that magnitude of information sought was very high and required more time. After some time information seeker was asked to deposit an amount of Rs 80,000/- by the concerned PIO for photocopying the record to be provided under RTI Act to the information seeker.
Meanwhile, Mudassir Manzoor filed first appeal before Chief Engineer of Irrigation & FC Srinagar on the grounds that no response was received by him within 30 days. Thereafter, the information seeker filed 2nd appeal before the State Information Commission (SIC) Srinagar.
The department cannot ask the information seeker to pay Rs 80,000 without proper calculation ? this was simply an act to demoralize the RTI applicant because the proper calculation was not made by the office of the Executive Engineer . At the same time Information seeker was also not sure what kind of information he wanted ? The Govt departments are supposed to digitize their records and section 4 (1) (b) of J&K RTI Act 2009 lays emphasis on it.
Order of Information Commission :
While disposing off this case the State Information Commission (SIC) asked the Executive Engineer to allow inspection of the records. The SIC issued following order which reads as :
“Therefore, in the light, clause 2 (i) of the State RTI Act, the appellant has been advised to attend the Division for carrying out inspection of documents/records and also collect Xerox copies of relevant records after selection. In view of aforesaid provisions of the Act, the Commission is of the considered view that the information sought by the appellant is not specific, that compilation of such information would definitely divert the resources of the public authority disproportionately. In view of the above response of the PIO dated 17.08.2015 asking the appellant to attend his office to carry out inspection of documents and records and take relevant extracts thereafter is in accordance with the provisions of the Act and also fulfills the requirement of transparency as enshrined in the preamble of RTI Act 2009. There are no orders as to the costs as the PIO has acted in good faith and at no stage he has denied access to information, but only informed the appellant the fact that “magnitude of information sought is very high”
Conclusion :
Had the Executive Engineer (PIO) who asked the RTI applicant to pay Rs 80,000 as Xerox charges abided by section 4 (1) (b) of State RTI Act, he would not have asked the information seeker to pay such a huge amount as photocopying charges , because the said information should have been available on Irrigation & Flood control department’s official website (administrative deptt and Chief Engineer’s official website ). Another important aspect is why do RTI applicants seek haphazard and voluminous information about which they don’t have any inputs? If one gets 40,000 page information what will the RTI applicant do with such voluminous information ? RTI applicants must always seek information which is of public interest and if we try to use RTI just to put a pressure on Government officials for some personal benefits , then we are doing a disservice to our nation. Such acts prompt those people who are not happy with RTI legislation to speak against this transparency law. It would be better to ask for inspection of documents and records if we feel the information could be voluminous. PIO’s should also ask the RTI applicants to undertake inspection under Section 2 (i) of J&K RTI Act 2009 if they feel the information sought is huge and will divert their resources.
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