Civil Writ Petition No.3964 of 2009 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Date of Decision:- 7.1.2011 Sarpanch, Gram Panchayat, Silikalan, Radaur (Yamua Nagar) ...Petitioner Versus State Information Commission, Haryana and another ...Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE MEHINDER SINGH SULLAR Present:- Mr.Jagdish Manchanda, Advocate for the petitioner. Mr.Kirti Singh, Deputy Advocate General, Haryana. M ehinder S ingh S ullar , J. (Oral) The conspectus of the facts, which needs a necessary mention for a limited purpose of deciding the core controversy involved in the instant writ petition and emanating from the record, is that Jai Singh son of Atma Ram (respondent No.2) filed an application (Annexure P2/T) before the petitioner-State Public Information Officer (for brevity “petitioner-SPIO”)-cum-Sarpanch of village Silikalan, for seeking information, in regard to the proceeding book, cash book, lease (Patta) register, saving pass book of bank, receipt of expenditure, copy of muster-roll from April 2005 to August, 2008, copies of DFC, SGRY records, stock register, grant of HRDF and cash book register by virtue of the provisions of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (hereinafter to be referred as “the Act”). He has also attached a postal order bearing No.41-G-130312 with the application, in lieu of the required fees. The information was not supplied to him by the petitioner- SPIO Sarpanch. He (petitioner) arbitrarily demanded the exorbitant fees from respondent No.2 in this regard. 2. Aggrieved by the action of petitioner-SPIO, private respondent filed the first appeal and the Ist Appellate Authority-cum-BDPO (for short “FAA”) directed him (petitioner) to supply the information to respondent No.2, vide letter bearing No.1568 dated 14.11.2008 (Annexure P3/T) within two days. Petitioner- Civil Writ Petition No.3964 of 2009 2 SPIO, instead of supplying the information, again arbitrarily raised the demand of ` 9950/- for giving the information. 3. Still aggrieved by the inaction of petitioner-SPIO and order (Annexure P3/T) of FAA, respondent No.2 filed an appeal. The State Information Commission (hereinafter to be referred as “SIC”), Haryana accepted the appeal and directed the petitioner-SPIO to furnish the information to respondent No.2 free of charge on receiving the order within 15 working days, by virtue of impugned order dated 17.2.2009 (Annexure P10). 4. Again instead of complying with the order of SIC, petitioner -SPIO filed the instant petition, challenging the impugned order (Annexure P10). 5. Having heard the learned counsel for the parties, having gone through the record with their valuable help and after bestowal of thoughts over the entire matter, to my mind, there is no merit in the instant petition in this context. 6. Ex facie, the main celebrated argument of the learned counsel that there is no provision under the Act/Rules, vide which, the SIC can direct the petitioner-SPIO to supply the information free of costs to respondent No.2, is not only devoid of merit but misplaced as well. 7. What is not disputed here is that respondent No.2 filed an application (Annexure P2/T) seeking the indicated information and attached the postal order in lieu of the fees. Petitioner-SPIO even did not supply the information within two days as directed by the FAA, vide order/letter (Annexure P3/T) and arbitrarily raised a demand of exorbitant amount of ` 9950/- as fees. 8. As is clear that Section 7 of the Act postulates that State Public Information Officer, 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. 9. Sequelly, sub-section (6) of this section further posits that Civil Writ Petition No.3964 of 2009 3 notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (5), the person making request for the information shall be provided the information free of charge where a public authority fails to comply with the time limited specified in sub-section (1). 10. As is evident from the record that the petitioner-SPIO did not comply with the time limits specified in sub-section (1) of section 7 of the Act and did not supply the information, despite specific order/letter (Annexure P3/T) of FAA. In that eventuality, the SIC was within its jurisdiction to direct the petitioner-SPIO to supply the information free of charges, vide impugned order (Annexure P10). Therefore, the contrary arguments of learned counsel for the petitioner-SPIO “stricto sensu” deserve to be and are hereby repelled under the present set of circumstances. 11. There is another aspect of the matter, which can be viewed from a different angle. As indicated earlier, the SIC, vide impugned order, has only directed the petitioner-SPIO to supply the information, in view of the provisions of Section 7(6) of the Act and nothing else has been decided against him. To me, such direction contained in the impugned order cannot possibly be set aside, while exercising the extraordinary jurisdiction of this Court under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India, unless the same is perverse and without jurisdiction. No such patent illegality or legal infirmity has been pointed out in the impugned order by the learned counsel for the petitioner-SPIO. Hence, the same deserves to be maintained in the obtaining circumstances of the case. 12. No other point, worth consideration, has either been urged or pressed by the learned counsel for the parties. 13. In the light of the aforesaid reasons, as there is no merit, therefore, the instant writ petition is hereby dismissed as such. (Mehinder Singh Sullar) 7.1.2011 Judge AS Whether to be referred to reporter?Yes/No