The Hindu: Chennai: Tuesday,
April 08, 2014.
In India, the
Right to Information Act (RTI Act) was enacted in 2005 and since then, has
proved to be a strong weapon in the hands of people for improving transparency
in the Government departments.
However, the
moot question is, can a citizen, filing an application under the RTI Act, be
considered a consumer as defined under the Consumer Protection Act and failure
to provide information under RTI construed as “deficiency in service” for which
a citizen can approach the Consumer Fora for redress. There are diverse views
on the subject and this continues to remain an unsettled issue.
Earlier, in
the case of Dr. S.P. Thirumala Rao vs. Municipal Commissioner, Mysore City, the
National Commission held that when a citizen seeks information through an
application under the RTI Act and pays the prescribed fee, he becomes a
consumer as per the Consumer Protection Act, who has sought certain service. If
the public information officer, who is to be considered the service provider,
does not provide the requested information within the prescribed period or if
the information provided is inaccurate or incomplete, then, it would amount to
deficiency in service, it said.
However,
subsequently, there are other judgments of the National Commission that state
otherwise. Recently, in S. Dorai Raj vs. Divisional Personnel Officer &
Nodal Public Information Officer, Southern Railway, Madurai & Anr. that
came up before the National Commission, the Commission observed that apart from
the complaint being time-barred and the issue of jurisdiction, the petitioner
had no case even on merit. The State Commission had earlier held that it was
the duty of the appellant to prove that there existed a relationship of “consumer”
and “service provider” with the respondent. Under the RTI Act, the appellant is
entitled to obtain required information from the public information officer and
if information is not provided then, remedy is available for him to approach
the Appellate Authority under Section 19 of the RTI Act and therefore the
complaint was not maintainable before the Consumer Fora, it said. The National
Commission, in turn, stated that RTI Act was a Code in itself. It provides for
remedies available under the Act to a person who was denied information. Hence,
since the petitioner had specific remedy available to him under the Act, the
present consumer complaint did not lie within the purview of the Consumer
Protection Act, it held.
Nevertheless,
presently, in another interesting case, a consumer forum in Bangalore has ruled
that the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act could be invoked whenever
there was deficiency in services provided by the public authorities under the
RTI Act. In this particular instance, the complainant had sought for certain
documents under the RTI Act, from the institution in which he was employed and
had paid the required fees as well. However, the institution did not provide
the documents within the prescribed time-line but gave it much later. The Forum
held that according to Section 7 of the RTI Act, if information was provided
beyond the 30-day deadline, the information / documents should be provided for
free and since the institution had collected the fee and failed to provide
service on time, it amounted to deficiency in service and thus directed the
institute to refund the fees collected and pay an additional Rs. 900 towards
cost of litigation.
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