THE THRISSUR DISTRICT CO Vs. THE STATE INFORMATION COMMISSION, REPRESENTED BY ITS SECRETARY, PUNNEN ROAD, THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Exhaustive as the judgment of the Apex Court in Thalappalam Service Cooperative Bank Limited Vs. State of Kerala, (2013)16 SCC 82 is, the jurisdictional limit of the Right to Information Act ("the Act") vis-a-vis a private entity has, yet again, fallen for consideration. Given the Apex Court's definitive pronouncement, the State Information Commission ('the Commission'), the respondent, seems to have given up its claim that a co-operative society is a public authority. Instead, it now claims that an applicant can have information from a co-operative society through a public authority who can access it under any other law as has been defined under Sec. 2 (f) of the Act.

(2.) In this rash of writ petitions, the partyrespondents, in one group, as applicants, have straightaway applied to the co-operative societies concerned seeking certain information; in the other group, the applicants have applied to the departmental authorities; that is, the Co-operative Department, for information on the premise that the said authorities could summon the records and provide information to them.

(3.) Leaving aside the minor factual discrepancies, I reckon the core issue in all the writ petitions is a pure question of law: do the co-operative societies fall within the jurisdictional limits of the Right to Information Act ('the Act') directly or indirectly - that is, at least, through the process of an official gathering information and then providing it to the applicants? So, I have decided to dispose of all the writ petitions through a common judgment. For convenience sake, I take the facts and documents in W.P.(C)No. 17553/2014 as the basis for discussion.