The Odisha High Court has directed the Public Information Officer (PIO) in the Office of Assistant Engineer, National Highway Sub-Division in Nayagarh district, to provide information to the BPl RTI applicants free of cost as per Section 7 (5) of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
Kunja Bihari Patra, a BPl-RTI applicant, had submitted an RTI application on March 8, 2010 and April 27, 2010 to the PIO seeking some information about construction of NH-224.
When Patra didn’t get information from the PIO, he approached the State Information Commission (SIC) by lodging a complaint petition on July 20, 2011 under Section 18 of the RTI Act. He had mentioned in the petition that he was a BPl fellow and he was entitled to get information free of cost.
State Chief Information Commissioner Tarun Kanti Mishra heard the case and directed the Executive Engineer of the National Highways Division in Bhubaneswar to conduct an enquiry and submit a report as to whether the applications of the petitions were received by the PIO and timely action was taken there on.
The inquiring officer reported that both the applications as claimed by the petitioner were not received by the office of the PIO. Subsequently, on December 18 last year, the Commission directed the Public Information Officer (PIO) to intimate the complainant within fifteen days about the cost of information and supply the information to the complainant within seven days after the deposit of the fee.
Being aggrieved, Patra challenged the decision of the Commission in the High Court. Hearing the case and quoting the provision of Section 7(5) of the RTI Act, which says RTI applicants coming under BPl category are entitled to get the information freely, the High Court directed the concerned PIO to provide the information free of cost.
“It is very unfortunate that the SIC has gone to the extent of directing the Public Information Officer (PIO) to collect the fees from the BPl people,” said RTI activist Pradip Pradhan.