Haryana government's RTI Fee of Rs 50 is not justified

19 September, 2012

RTI stands for Right To Information and has been given the status of a fundamental right under our Constitution. Every citizen, under this right, has the freedom of speech and expression and right to know how the government works, what role does it play, what are its functions and so on.

IT FURTHER lays emphasis on making the lives of its citizens easy, smooth and making functioning of corporations truly democratic. The Act confers right to the citizens to know as to how the taxpayers’ money is being spent by the government.

Haryana is the only state that charges Rs 50 along with the RTI Application while the rest of the states in the country are quite satisfied with merely Rs 10 only.

Yes, in case their response/ action is prompt enough and much faster than the others, the fee could be justified. To quote their performance, our four RTI applications are pending in Gurgaon since May and July 2011.

Ultimately, we had no other option but to refer our cases to the chief State Information Officer, Haryana based at Chandigarh who has asked us to attend the proceedings on December 4 later this year.

Despite charging fives times extra, their performance is below standard. A common citizen is supposed to travel and stay on his own while the representatives of the defaulting departments claim their TA/ DA - what a pleasure trip at the cost of the applicant/ taxpayers’ money.

There should be uniformity at least in the fee structure throughout the country and the Act should be amended to refund a part of the expenses borne by the applicant.