Section 6 (2) of the RTI Act says, an applicant making request for information \u201cshall not\u201d be required to give any reason for requesting the information. However, the Madras High Court has said RTI applicants must give reasons for seeking information as it gave relief to its Registry from disclosing file notings on a complaint against a chief metropolitan magistrate.<\/p>\n
A division bench comprising Justices N. Paul Vasanthakumar and K. Ravichandrababu said an applicant must disclose the object for which information is sought and also satisfy that such object has a legal backing, a decision which may have far reaching implications on getting information under the RTI Act and which was decried by legal experts and activists.<\/p>\n
Further, it was observed by the bench that, \u201cIf information are to be furnished to a person, who does not have any reason or object behind seeking such information, in our considered view, the intention of the Legislature is not to the effect that such information are to be given like pamphlets to any person unmindful of the object behind seeking such information,\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Section 6 (2) doesn\u2019t mandate the reason for requesting information, HC order was silent on Section 6 (2). It was held that, \u201cWe should not be mistaken as if we are saying something against the intention of the Legislature. What we want to emphasise is that a Legislation, more particularly, the one on hand, must achieve the object, viz, concrete and effective functioning of the public authority with transparency and accountability by providing the information which are under the control of such public authorities\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Section 6 (2) of the RTI Act says, an applicant making request for information \u201cshall not\u201d be required to give any reason for requesting the information. However, the Madras High…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[1589,2029,2030,2738,2864,3053],"class_list":["post-5475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal-update","tag-information","tag-madras-hc","tag-madras-high-court","tag-reason-for-information","tag-rti-act","tag-section-6-2","clearfix","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n