The Delhi High Court Friday ruled that even those companies in which the government has a minority stake can be brought under the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Declaring National Agricultural Cooperative Federation of India Ltd. (NAFED), National Cooperative Consumer Federation of India Ltd (NCCF) and Krishak Bharti Cooperative Ltd. public authorities, Justice S. Muralidhar said there is no need to have deep or pervasive government control over an institution to bring it under the ambit of the transparency law.
“The absence of any adjective like deep or pervasive qualifying the word controlled in the RTI Act means that any control over the body by the central government will suffice to make it a public authority,” the court said
It dismissed the companies’ plea that since the government does not have majority stake in them, they do not fall under the ambit of the RTI.
“The initial attempt by most organizations and entities is to avoid the obligations under the RTI Act. Since the culture of transparency has not fully set in and old habits die hard, there is resistance on the part of institutions and entities to avoid being declared a public authority,” the court said.
sir while it is good news that the ambit of R.T.I is expanding and as a lay mam i have one simple doubt my father has purchased one flat at tamil nadu housing board m.k.b.nagar long ago he has completly paid the dues and he died
and at the time of his death the ownership of the property is changed to my mothers name and years back we received a letter from t.n.h.b to register the flat
since my father died long back and mother is also old we cannot trace the rental receipts and for registering the same they insist on the last paid receipt since we do not have the information whether as the legal heir we can get the information by way of applying to right to information act and if so please guide us the procedure to be adopted to my mail sainivas1@gmail.com
A landmark judgement delivered by honourable High Court.Let the Govt. to come forward for necessary enactmentso as to increase the sphere of applicability of RTI Act.Further, Govt. should prescribe the code of Governance for all entities, whereat public interest is involved ,so that people can gauge any deviation in the entity, by seeking information under RTI.