Guru Ram Dass Charitable Trust is a public authority within the meaning of the RTI Act being a legal extension of SGPC, a statutory body : PSIC

[sabharwal786]

The Orders of the PSIC areas below:

Under Section 2(h) of the RTI Act, 2005, any body or organisation, which is established or created by a law of Parliament or State Legislature, is deemed to be a public authority. SGPC, being a creation of law is a public authority. The statutory body creates an asset in 1977 from its own resources and from land donated by Panchayat. In 1992 it passes are solution, creating a trust and transfered the assets of the Hospital Institute to that trust. It makes its incumbent President a life time member and further incorporates a clause in the trust deed that SGPC President shall be an ex-officio President of Trust. The Trust deed provides for annual financial assistance from SGPC of Rs.60 lacs to run and maintain the respondent hospital.Trustees are nominee of SGPC. In these circumstances, the Trust and the Medical Institute run by Trust must be viewedas an arm of the SGPC. The trust is anextension of the SGPC, which created it. In the circumstances, the legal veil of a Trust created by registration of a society will have to be lifted and the embolic cord between the trust and the SGPC established. I have no hesitation in holding that the present-respondent Guru Ram Dass Charitable Trust is a public authority withinthe meaning of the RTI Act being a legal extension of SGPC, a statutory body. Therefore, the trust shall take steps to appoint a PIO and comply with all other provisions of the Act ibid.