Following this, a request was made to hold a physical hearing instead, with the hope that the appellate authority would hear the applicant properly this time. But from the time the application was called out, till it was dismissed, the process was nothing short of an acute violation of the “audi alteram partem” principle (which means, “let the other side be heard as well”).The authority harassed the applicant by repeatedly asking the reason for filing the application – in a clear violation of Sec. 6 (2) of the RTI Act, which states that the applicant seeking information shall not be required to give any reason for requesting the information.The appellate authority went on a step further and said that the applicant had no right to seek information which monitored the functioning of the court.The illegality did not stop there; the authority went on and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 to deter the applicant and similar future applicants and applications.It is vital to note that neither the RTI Act nor the Gujarat High Court (Right to Information) Rules 2005, authorise a public authority to impose costs on an applicant. The RTI application process is not akin to a regular court hearing and the appellate authority does not have the power to impose fines.Information like cause lists are integral to establishing public accountability and should have in fact been proactively disclosed under Section 4 of the RTI Act by the Himmat Nagar District Legal Services Authority’s (DLSA) PIO.As the appellate authority hearing this matter, the District Judge should have ordered the PIO to proactively disclose the information requested to keep the spirit of the RTI Act intact. By not proactively disclosing such crucial information, the PIO was creating significant barriers for the effective implementation of the RTI Act.Over and above imposing illegal fines on the appellant for requesting information that should have been proactively disclosed, the public authority revealed the name, address and contact details of the applicant to the local newspaper to serve as a deterrent.The matter got published as a news item: ‘RTI applicant fined with INR 10,000 for misuse of RTI Act’. Not only is this a serious violation of the right to privacy, but it also unfairly intimidates the appellant and RTI applicants in general from pursuing procedural remedies for denial of public information.
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