DNA: Mumbai: Sunday,
April 20, 2014.
Never in his
wildest dreams had RTI activist Chetan Kothari thought buying a Rs10 court fee
stamp would be difficult. But after going three times to various courts, he
finally gave up the chase. "I went to the high court, sessions court and
the metropolitan court, but nowhere was I able to buy them," said Kothari.
Off late, the
dearth of the stamp that is most in demand, has left RTI activists stumped.
Though there are other means through which an application can be filed, doing
it by pasting a stamp on the application is the most convenient and easiest for
the applicants. Other options like giving cash, submitting a demand draft or
Indian Postal Orders for submitting an application pose other technical
difficulties.
"The
problem in giving cash is you have to go to the cash counter and at times it is
closed. Through court fee stamp, the process is faster," said SK Nangia,
an RTI activist, who has held on to his application for over two weeks after
having exhausted all the stamps he had.
"When
you go there, they say they have only Rs1 or Rs2 fee stamps. But buying those
is not feasible as one cannot affix many stamps on one application," said
Nangia.
When
contacted, BP Patil, registrar general, said, "I will have to make an
inquiry into this. Normally, there are people around who are authorised to sell
them, but I am not aware of this problem."