Patna,(BiharTimes): National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) and National Alliance of People’s Movement (NAPM) have welcomed the Patna High Court ruling of April 12, which had declared the Bihar Right to Information Rules, Section 6(2) ultra vires (Shiv Prakash Singh vs State of Bihar).

The court has directed the state government to amend the Bihar RTI Rules, 2006 and make it consistent with Section 19 (3) of the Right to Information Act, 2005. This will bring relief to thousands of petitioners whose appeal was rejected by the State Information Commission due to the absence of order from the first appellate authority.

The rule does not recognize the position in the Right to Information Act, 2005, Section 19(3) which states that a second appeal may be filed even if the order is not issued in the first appeal.

This is indicated by the words “A second appeal against the decision under sub-section (1) shall lie within ninety days from the date on which the decision should have been made or was actually received...”

As per this rule it was necessary to get an order from the first appellant authority before filing the second appeal in the State Information Commission.

This rule was not enforced by the Commission till Ashok Kumar Choudhary, former chief secretary of Bihar, took over as the Chief Information Commissioner of the state. Under his leadership the State Information Commission rejected thousands of second appeal in 2011-2012 citing want of order from the first appellate authority.

NCPRI along with several other RTI activist groups had opposed the decision. It was felt that this particular rule was used to essentially reduce the number of pending cases in the Commission.

This practice was later reversed by the current Chief Information Commissioner RJM Pillai.

The Patna High Court decision is very important as it removes the scope of such anti-people interpretations/decisions by the Commission.

NCPRI has since demanded that instead of using such anti-people measures, the state should appoint more Information Commissioners to dispose the increasing number of applications. Currently there are only three Information Commissioners and soon there will be only two as one of the them,Farzand Ahmad, will retire this year.

It was NCPRI, with the help of RTI activist Shiv Prakash Rai, which challenged the Bihar RTI Rules, 2006 through a writ petition in the Patna High Court.

Advocates Rakesh Kumar Jha and Nitiranjan Jha represented the petitioner Shiv Prakash Rai in this case. The order in the writ was passed by a division bench of the High Court headed by the Chief Justice.