Friends, We all know that the Right to Information Act 2005 was passed on 15th June, 2005 “ to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens to secure access to information under the control of public authorities, in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority”. Thus the purpose of this Act is to open up the closed doors of governance for the common public to have a clear look at it, so as to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority. Taking these perspectives and intentions in mind, the Central government and many State governments including the Government of Uttar Pradesh went on to provide for fees as prescribed under section 6(1) and 7(5) of the Act to be accompanied along with the applications being presented by the RTI applicants. Section 7(5) of the Act wanted these fees to be reasonable. The Central government through the Right to Information (Regulation of Fee and Cost) Amendment Rules, 2006 fixed an application fee of rupees ten and a fee of rupees two for each page (in A-4 or A-3 size paper) created or copied. Similarly most of the other State governments have fixed similar rates of Rs. ten (and some at Rupees twenty) as the fees to be accompanied with each application. Unlike these Governments, the High Court of Allahabad through the Allahabad High Court (Right to Information) Rules, 2006 fixed a fee of Rs. 500/- and Rs. 15/- per page of information to be supplied . Same is the situation with the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha. Here again, the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha Sachivalaya Right to Information (Regulation of Fee and Cost) Rules, 2007 fixes the same rates. You will all agree that this cannot be called reasonable in any way. There is an urgent need for all the RTI activists to look into this matter seriously and try to find out ways to get over this problem. The National RTI Forum shall be going for a writ petition against these arbitrary and unreasonable fees. Would really love to get useful suggestions from all the learned and socially aware friends in this group. Dr Nutan Thakur, Convener, National RTI Forum, Lucknow # 94155-34525
