Utility Premises Private Limited Vs Central Public Information Officer (First Appellate Authority of IBBI)
The Respondent had stated that under RTI Act, only citizens can seek information and since the Applicant being a Company is not a citizen, it is not eligible to seek information under RTI Act.
In J.C. Talukdar vs. C.E.(E) CPWD Kolkata (CIC/WB/C/2007/00104 & 105 dated 17 May 2007), the CIC observed as follows:
“This is at heart a question of whether a company or its director will fall under the definition of citizen under the RTI Act. A company or a corporation is a “legal person” and, as such, it has a legal entity. This legal entity is distinct from their shareholders, managers, managing directors. This is a settled position in law since the Solomon’s case decided long back by the House of Lords. They have rights and obligations and can sue and are sued in a court of law. Section 3 of the RTI Act confers “right to information” on all “citizens”. A “citizen” under the Constitution Part II that deals with “citizenship” can only be a natural born person and it does not even by implication include a legal or a juristic person… Even if it were conceded that a company or a corporate body is a legal entity distinct from its shareholders and it is not in itself a citizen it is a fact that all superior courts have been admitting applications in exercise of their extraordinary jurisdiction from companies, societies and associations under Article 19 of the Constitution of which the RTI Act, 2005 is a child. Very few petitions have been rejected on the ground that the Applicants / Petitioners are corporate bodies or companies or associations and as such not “citizens”. This Commission also has been receiving sizeable number of such applications from such entities. If the courts could give relief to such entities the PIOs also should not throw them out on a mere technical ground that the Applicant / Appellant happened to be a legal person and not a citizen. In conclusion we direct that an application / appeal from an association or a partnership firm or a Hindu Undivided Family or from some other group of individuals constituted as a body or otherwise should be accepted and allowed.””
Thus, in light of above, I note that under section 3, all the citizens have the right to information. I also find that the Applicant’s name in the RTI Application and the Appellant’s name in the RTI Appeal is provided as ‘Utility Premises Private Limited’ and it is the company which is seeking information under the RTI act. However, in the RTI Appeal, the gender of the Appellant has been filled as ‘Male’. It is not clear as to how a company/corporate person can be categorised as ‘male’ or ‘female’. This prima facie shows that the Appellant has attempted to procure the information misguiding to be an individual citizen. This approach is certainly discouraged.
However, I am also of the view that rejecting the information request on such technical grounds would not be in the spirit of the RTI Act which promotes transparency.
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