Times
of India: Bhopal: Saturday, 06 December 2014.
In what
appears to be an attempt by Bhopal RTO authorities to make information under
RTI inaccessible, officials have begun charging Rs 100 per certified page of
any requisite document.
BJP leader
Pradeep Khandelwal and his associate had filed an RTI, seeking documents on
SUVs registered at the RTO between 2006 and 2014.
"We were
handed over a letter demanding Rs 100 per page for certified copies of
documents. This means we had to pay more than Rs 1 lakh for 1,000 pages while
they should have provided us for Rs 2 per page," said Khandelwal.
He claimed
the same RTO was providing certified documents for Rs 2 per page before a new
officer, Ajay Gupta, stepped in. Gupta was not available for comment.
RTO officials
maintain they are charging Rs 100 per page as per rule. "Rate of Rs 2 per
page as prescribed under RTI Act, 2005, is valid only for departments which do
not have a prescribed fee. Our officers were charging Rs 2 per page till they
came to know about this provision," said an officer at RTO.
Section 5(7)
of RTI Act makes it mandatory for an applicant to pay prescribed fee of a
department for every page for copy of records. "Our fee was Rs 100 per
page before RTI was enacted," said RTO officer.
"RTO is
trying to mislead the applicant. This section is applicable for registrar and
cooperatives only,"
said Ajay Dubey, RTI activist. If you walk into the stamp duty registrar's
office, seeking copy of records under RTI Act, you would have to pay Rs 10,
which is genuine. "Such confusion can thwart the purpose of RTI Act. They
can charge prescribed fee only on certain documents, not all," said Dubey.
The general
administration department (GAD) till date has not conducted an audit of RTI
applications which are pending, disposed or number of applications with various
public information officers. MP government has not reviewed implementation of
RTI in last nine years. "They do away with cosmetic efforts by circulating
DoPT circulars," he said.
.JPG)
.JPG)
