Bar & Bench: New Delhi: Wednesday, March 21, 2018.
While
adjudicating a batch of petitions challenging the RTI rules framed by different
High Courts and other government authorities in the Country, the Supreme Court
today directed that RTI fees should not exceed Rs. 50 per application and Rs. 5
for photocopying, for all government authorities.
The order was
passed by a two-judge Bench of Justices AK Goel and UU Lalit.
The genesis
of the case lies in a petition filed in the year 2012 by Common Cause. The
petition had challenged the Allahabad High Court (RTI) Rules, 2006, on the
ground that they were obstructive and were not in consonance with the spirit of
the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act).
The petition
contended that Rules 3, 4, 5, 20, 25, 26 and 27 of the Allahabad High Court
(RTI) Rules, are in clear violation of the different provisions of the RTI Act
and also violates Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
During the
initial hearing, Advocate Prashant Bhushan had referred to the specific
provisions of the Act to demonstrate that the provisions of the aforesaid Rules
are in violation of the provisions of the Act.
It was his
argument that Rule 4, which prescribes charging an exorbitant fee of ₹ 500 per application, has an effect of
abridging the right to information and thus subverts the very object of the
Act.
“There can be
no doubt that such a high fee is unwarranted and cannot be considered to be
reasonable.”
He contended
that the application fee of ₹500 as prescribed in the Rules is more than fifty
times the fee prescribed by the Central Government. It was further contended by
him that Rule 3 which prescribes that “every application shall be made for one
particular item of information” is also ultra vires the RTI Act as there is no
such restriction in the Act.
The Allahabad
High Court submitted that it was going to consider amending the Rules so as to
bring it in consonance with the provisions of the Act. Subsequently, the High
Court brought in some amendments and prescribed ₹250 as application fees.
In the
subsequent hearing, similar petitions challenging the RTI Rules of the Bombay
High Court, Chhattisgarh Vidhan Sabha and Legislative assembly of Uttar Pradesh
were also tagged with the main petition.
The Court
after hearing the parties today, directed that RTI fees would be limited to ₹50
per application and also fixed the upper limit of ₹5 for photocopying documents
required to obtain the information. The order will apply to all government
authorities.
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