Hindustan
Times: Chandigarh: Tuesday, 27 January 2015.
All the
cooperative banks in Haryana would henceforth be considered to be public
authority and thus come under the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act,
the Haryana State Information Commission has held.
The decision
was taken by the commission which constituted a larger bench comprising chief
information commissioner Naresh Gulati and information commissioner Shiv Raman
Gaur and Hemant Atri while deciding on as many as 13 applications filed against
different cooperative banks seeking information. The commission also perused
the judgment of October 7, 2013, of the Supreme Court passed in Thalappalam
Service Coop Bank and others Vs State of Kerala and others prior to its
decision.
The decision
carries significance as there had been a large number of applicants seeking a
variety of information relating to the cooperative banks though these banks
held that they did not come in the ambit of the RTI Act as they do not fall
under public authority.
The banks
also maintained that since they were not run or financed by the state
government and had board of directors, hence the government had only limited
regulatory role in these bodies. The issue had also come up before the Punjab
and Haryana high court when a Kurukshetra lawyer sought information from
Kurukshetra Central Cooperative Bank but was denied information on the same
grounds.
The state
information commission, which clubbed several applications of similar nature,
held that the cooperative bank funds were raised by way of debentures and
NABARD was the main source for funds, cooperative banks borrowings were even up
to 90% which were guaranteed by state government for the payment of interests.
The
commission thus held that it was the government which controlled the societies
and the banks and so these came under the RTI Act ambit.
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