BENGALURU: The Karnataka Information Commission has ruled that the Karnataka State Co-operative Apex Bank qualifies as a public authority under the Right to Information Act, 2005, directing it to comply with provisions of the transparency law.
State Information Commissioner Rajashekara S in his order has directed the Apex Bank to appoint Public Information Officers (PIOs) and First Appellate Authorities (FAAs) across its offices and comply with the proactive disclosure requirements under Sections 4(1)(A) and 4(1)(B) of the RTI Act.
The SIC also instructed the Principal Secretary of the Cooperation Department and the Registrar of Cooperative Societies to ensure that the bank implements the RTI framework without delay. In order to examine the action taken the hearing of the case has been adjourned to April 9.
The authorities with the Apex Bank are likely to contest the SIC’s order by moving the High Court as the Bank is not a ‘State’, according to a source. “I think this (SIC’s) is a correct judgment on the law and Apex Bank does not have much legal ground to contest it. The only debatable point is whether SIC can say Apex Bank is “State” for the purposes of Article 12 but that is not the basis for this decision. The Apex Bank is certainly “public authority” for the purposes of the RTI Act and should have long ago started implementing it,” said Alok Prasanna Kumar, co-founder of Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.