After making a representation to the Delhi High Court, a group of law students here has raised the issue of discrepancies in the High Court’s RTI rules with the umbrella legislation, the Right to Information Act, 2005, through a public interest litigation.
The PIL has sought harmonisation of fee charged under the RTI rules.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath took up the writ petition on Wednesday while observing that the issue needed to be dealt with.
The Bench issued notice to the High Court’s Registry, seeking its response by January 20, when the case will come up for further hearing.
The writ petition has affirmed that the lack of compatibility had led to denial of access to information available under the law and the issue affects a fundamental right of citizens.
It has sought quashing of Rule 3 of Delhi High Court RTI Rules, 2006, under which separate applications have to be made to access unrelated information.
While the RTI Act prescribes Rs.10 as application fee and Rs.2 per page for providing physical or photo copies, the High Court’s rules have laid down the application fee of Rs.50 and Rs.5 per page for copies.
There is no provision in the RTI Act for filing of separate applications in case of unrelated information, but Rule 3 of the High Court’s rules states that for each information sought, a separate application should be made.
Besides, there is no provision in the High Court’s rules for supply of information free of cost to the citizens falling under the below poverty line (BPL) category, which is depriving an important part of the society from accessing information, according to the petition.
The PIL has been filed by law students Aastha Sharma, Ishwin Mehta, Paras Jain and Kumar Shanu.
All of them are pursuing the law course in a private university here.
In their representation made to the Chief Justice last month, they had requested her to harmonise the High Court’s RTI rules with the Central legislation in order to uphold and promote the objective and spirit of the RTI Act.
The students said they had received no reply so far to their representation sent on October 4.
While the RTI Act prescribes Rs.10 as application fee and Rs.2 per page for providing physical or photo copies, the High Court’s rules have laid down the application fee
of Rs.50 and Rs.5 per page for copies. The petition has now sought quashing of Rule 3 of Delhi High
Court RTI Rules, 2006
