In a major victory cooperative societies have been ruled not to fall under the ambit of RTI by the Supreme Court. The controversy has been bogging cooperatives for a long time with cooperative leaders and RTI activists drawn at the two ends of the legal fight.
IFFCO, the cooperative giant was first to win the RTI battle which led many cooperative leaders to heave a sigh of relief and generated a hope among others of battling it out the court in course of time.
Cooperative societies would not be covered under the ” right to information Act” and therefore not liable to share information with public under the law observed the apex court while disposing of a slew of appeals impugning a Kerala High Court judgment in the matter.
The court said the authority exercised by the registrar of cooperative societies under the cooperative societies Act ” is only regulatory or supervisory and ” supervisory or general regulation under the statute of cooperative societies which are body corporate does not render activities of the body so regulated subject to such control of the state so as to bring it within the meaning of ”state” or instrumentality of the state”.
The court reasoned ” if the information is not statutorily accessible by a public authority as defined in section 2[h] of the RTI Act , that information will not be under the control of the public authority. Resultantly, it will not be possible for citizens to secure access to that information’, the court said.
”As per the constitutional Act 2011, as forming cooperative societies is raised to the status of a fundamental right , the state will make efforts to promote their autonomy , observed the court.
The court said if the information sought will not subserve the larger public interest, the public authority or the officer is not legally obliged to provide that information.