Business Standard:
Mumbai: Monday, March 31, 2014.
The Right to
Information (RTI) Act was implemented in India nine years ago. The Bill was
introduced in 2004's winter session of Parliament and passed in June 2005.
RTI remains a
potent legal weapon to fight opacity in public offices and politicians continue
to fear it. In the last winter session, a Parliamentary standing committee,
while supporting passage of an amendment in the Act, concluded political
parties should be kept out of the ambit. The RTI (Amendment) Bill, 2013, seeks
to insert an explanation in Section 2, which states any association or body of
individuals registered or recognised as a political party under the
Representation of the People Act, 1951, will not be considered a public
authority.
While many
people have successfully used RTI to get information on their applications for
ration cards or passports, there are mixed views on what extent RTI can benefit
a layman.
Individuals
face many issues with money matters. How can investors make the best use of
RTI? Says Pune-based RTI activist Vivek Velankar: "On the investment side,
there are many private sector companies. Unfortunately, they do not fall under
the purview of RTI directly. Only public sector companies come under it."
Private companies can be tracked under RTI through the regulators like Reserve
Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), and
Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irda).
Regulators
can provide only the information a company is bound to furnish. At the same
time, not all this information can be shared with you. The Act, under Sections
8 and 9, exempts certain categories of information from disclosures.
The fee for
an RTI application to a central government authority is Rs 10, to be paid
through demand draft or cheque or by post. The charge for providing the
information is Rs 2 for each page created/copied, actual charge of a larger
size paper copy, actual cost for samples and, for inspection of records, no fee
for the first hour, Rs 5 for each 15 minutes, thereafter. To provide
information under Section 7(5) of the Act, it will charge Rs 50 per diskette or
floppy. For information provided in printed form at the price fixed for such
publication or Rs 2 per page of photocopy for extracts from the publication. If
a financial institution or a regulator can provide the required information, it
will do so within 30 days of receiving the application.
Here's how
you can use RTI with various financial institutions:
EPF: There
have been many instances of employers not depositing the contributions towards
Employee Provident Fund (EPF) deducted from an employee's salary. Employees can
file an RTI application with the Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to
check. An EPF account balance can be checked online.
Those who
have transferred EPF balances know the pain of doing so. It is hard to track
the balance transfers. RTI can help in checking the status. Even withdrawals
from an EPF account can be tracked through RTI.
Real estate:
RTI activist Bhaskar Prabhu of Mumbai's Mahiti Adhikar Manch says individuals
looking to buy a house in a realty project can use RTI. Eighty per cent of
Mumbai flats do not have an Occupation Certificate (OC), without which you cannot
enter a flat. "Individuals can ask for the Information of Disapproval
(IoD), under which one can know the requisites the builder needs for the
project, which of the documents he has, which ones are yet to be furnished, if
the permission from local authority is in place, if the project is in the
builder's name or not, if the land title is clear or not, floor planning of the
construction, fire safety planning and so on," he says.
Here, you
will need to check with the local authority under which the project falls -
municipal corporation, collector, gram panchayat. Accordingly, the RTI
application should be addressed, says Prabhu.
Banks:
Sometimes, bank staff can be non-cooperative. If you feel so, RTI can help you
secure information about customer service norms, its service and the terms and
conditions.
Second, banks
might allow you to open an account or locker only if you make a deposit or buy
a insurance policy. You can question banks on such unjust rules. Or, when you
think a bank has gone against its own terms and conditions. Assume you are
shopping for the cheapest home loan and a bank is not helping with the required
information. You can find the interest rates, prepayment norms and other
documentation issues through RTI.
However, this
is only applicable to nationalised banks directly. For private sector banks, go
through RBI.
Insurance:
There are only five public sector insurance companies - Life Insurance
Corporation of India (LIC), New India Assurance, United India Insurance,
Oriental India Insurance and National Insurance. These can be approached
directly; the private insurers will have to be approached through Irda.
"There
isn't exact transparency on where traditional insurance plans invest.
Policyholders can question LIC on that," says Velankar. You can also check
on the charges of investing in traditional and unit-linked plans. Claim status
can also be checked, if delayed.
Most banks
are listed and declare financial details. So do even the unlisted insurance
companies, through their bank promoters. You can ask for more financial details
from these institutions, if required.
Income tax:
According to experts, if all the information provided while filing the return
was correct, and the refund hasn't come, one can check the status with an RTI
application. Only an assessee can make an application for knowing the status of
his/her tax income tax refund.
Experts
suggest this route if you have not received your refund for at least a year.
RTI is an interim step before you knock at the Ombudsman's door.
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