Rly asks man to pay for RTI information

[karira]

As reported by Jeeva of TNN in timesofindia.indiatimes.com on 10 July 2008:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/C...ow/3216494.cms

Rly asks man to pay for RTI information

CHENNAI: Continuing with its policy of asking RTI applicants to pay for information, Southern Railway has asked another applicant to pay the power and maintenance costs of computers used to provide answers to his query. This is the second time the railways has sought to levy such charges. It had recently asked an activist to pay for "salaries and allowances" to its staff for replying to an RTI query.

V Madhav, a resident of Porur, filed an RTI application at the Southern Railway headquarters here on February 25, 2008, seeking details on different quotas available on train tickets, including information on quotas for agents, tatkal and emergency and the number of tickets booked under each quota on Pandian Express from January 10 to 20, 2008.

In his reply, the public information officer said the applicant would have to pay Rs 750 to provide the information as "it took eight man hours to compile it."

Challenging this, the applicant moved the RTI appellate authority in Southern Railway questioning the rationale behind asking for payment in order to provide information.

The appellate authority rejected it, saying: "The details have to be accessed through the main disc of the system.

It is highlighted that different infrastructure devices such as hard disc, MIS application, CPU power, besides the maintenance of these equipment, staff nominated for this work are the factors which have to be considered for arriving at the total man hours for levy of additional fee." The applicant has now filed his second appeal before the Central Information Commission.

Southern Railway’s chief public relations officer Neenu Ittyerah said the reply sent to the earlier RTI applicant asking him to pay salaries and allowances to get information was "wrongly worded" but added that the railways can ask for "cost of information" from applicants.

Ittyerah told TOI: "The Railways are entitled to seek the cost of providing information asked for by any petitioner under the RTI Act, if the information is not readily available in document form and, resources, i.e., manpower, machinery, etc, are required to be deputed for extracting and making ready the information. This has been upheld by the Central Information Commission."