Appeal to High Court for penalty
4 Dec, 2011An applicant had sought information and documents about the government notifications relating to the cost to be charged for obtaining property card, measurement of land, mutation of property, and pendency of the mutation cases. The PIO allegedly failed to give the information within a month as per Section 7(1) Subject to the proviso to sub-section (2) of section 5 or the proviso to subsection (3) of section 6, the Central Public Information Officer or State Public Information Officer, as the case may be, on receipt of a request under section 6 shall, as expeditiously as possible, and in any case within thirty days of the receipt of the request, either provide the information on payment of such fee as may be prescribed or reject the request for any of the reasons specified in sections 8 and 9: of RTI Act and hence was required to the entire information free of cost as per Section 7(6). As the First Appellate Authority did not decide the appeal for two months and the State Information Commission ordered the applicant to pay the fees for seeking documents, he approached the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court. The HC has issued notices to State Information Commissioner Shri PW Patil, the FAA and the PIO. The applicant has also prayed for the stringent penalty of Rs 25,000/- on the respondents.