Want to get information of reservation?

The details would be available from the Reservation Centre for the particular train. I could see nothing in Sec:8 of RTI Act, which prohibits the disclosure of such information.

Apply for the information under RTI Act to The Cetral public Information Officer of the concerned Railway . You will get the information  called for.

@Devendra,

A very good question based on RTI. I am going to give my views via these two cases. Please have a careful study of these two attached documents's content.

Believe me,these two cases are sure-fire answer to a number of questions,directly or indirectly,inter-related.

Regards,

Best wishes.

Dear Sir, Sir, I live in UP and belong to General Category but my wife born in up and belong to OBC cast. I want to know, may she continue ...

Read more: https://www.rtiindia.org/forum/54472-can-my-wife-continue-her-reservation-up-after-marriage-me-general-category.html#ixzz2F7Ra2poJ 
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@anurag,

I suggest you to start a new thread so as to not to intertwine with another thread,therby avoiding the cofunsion, which might have taken place if not taken care of, among readers and repliers alike.

Hope an action on your part first..

We will follow..

Thanks

Regards

Further in the case cited tha applicant sent his revised application on 11-02-2012. He did not receive any reply within 30 days and he appealed to the higher authority. As he was not given the information within 30 days, he should have been given the information free of cost.

@Mps Ramani,

It's a very good thing that despite of being a scientist, you have words of law in your vocals.But at the same time, your response to the case,so attached previously,is a bit quick in my opinion. Probably,you should have dig the matter up,make some search on your part, a quotient highly desirable with such qualification.

Anyway,let me try to clear your doubt going along with your text,reproduced in the original form for the sake of convenience and readability.

1.As stated in the Act, did the Railways advise the seeker of information, how the cost of Rs.1000/- per page was arrived at?

Further the Act also says that the charges should be reasonable.

How did the Railway Board or any other authority compute the figure of Rs.1000/- per page?

Even more surprising is how did the Central Information Commission justified the reply of Railways?

Reply- Please study the content of the attached file(below).I am sure,everything will fall in place.

2.And come back here, if the Railways say the information is time barred. I shall advise how to proceed further, in such an event.

Reply- I think you have missed the content of section (4) of RTI act 2005.Let me reproduce some part of the same.

4. Obligations of public authorities. —(/) Every public authority shall—
(a)
maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and the form which facilitates the right to information under this Act and ensure that all records that are appropriate to be computerised are, within a reasonable time and subject to availability of resources, computerised and connected through a network all over the country on different systems so that access to such records is facilitated;

My Inference of the Obligation within the meaning of above text- Railway is not obliged to keep the data for unlimited time,it has fixed the time limit i.e. for six month back from the current date.

© Availability of resources(See the red text) - Resources available for which reasonable effort being made towards making it available,being the subject of availability,is said to become available,within the meaning of availability of resources.

Reasoning behind this time bound

It would not be difficult for you to understand that for such a large organization, the cost of keeping information is very huge and also there is a limitation in terms of resources needed to store amd maintain such a mammoth pile of dynamic data(Storage devices,Server Capacity,Load balancing(Distributed data organization),physical security,Wear and tear problems,and so on).

have purposely stated that I am a scientist, firstly because in the Lawyers’ Club other members should not think that I am a lawyer and secondly as according to me law is also a science. Further I do not take things lying down, nor do I consider that judgments are to be accepted like scripttures without questioning. If one has to abide by a certain judgment that is only for practical reasons. In this Forum one can certainly scientifically analyze a judgment and give an opinion.

Under the RTI Act, the basis of charging a certain fees for the supply of any information under the Act has to be disclosed and it should only reflect the incremental cost of disclosing the information.

In the first case cited the Railway Board had fixed a rate of Rs.1000/- per page for reproduction of a passenger manifest. The applicant did not exactly claim that the rate was in conflict with the provisions of the RTI Act. He only claimed that his application had preceded the decision of the Board, which was not true.

The Central Information Commission has taken into account previous decisions of the same commission to support its own decision.

Now what is the purpose of the RTI Act? The intention is that the general public should not only have access to the information held by public authorities, but also it should be at an affordable cost. It is to be noted that it is free for those below the poverty line.

The stand of the Central Information Commission in most cases, though not all, has been that general Departmental orders fixing a price for the supply of any information cannot be questioned under the provisions of the RTI Act. Devious arguments have also been given to differentiate between departmentally priced information and other information.

Only one Information commissioner Shri Shailesh Gandhi has not agreed with the opinion of other information commissioners. As a result in the Decision given by the Information Commission cited later by the Honorable  Member Shri Sumitra Kumar, the Commissioners have relied on Maxwell’s interpretation of statutes: Generalia specialibus non derogant.

They have also quoted the case of Registrar of Companies vs. Dharmendra Kumar Garg. Maxwell’s interpretation of statutes as well as this case deals with conflict between one Act with another Act of Parliament.

Acts are acts of Parliament. The price fixations referred to here are made by bodies like the Railway Board, which are subordinate to Parliament. They cannot undo the intentions of the Parliament. In fact one can send an application to the Railway Board asking for the basis and justification of Rs.1000/- per page and also for the minutes of the meeting at which the rate was fixed.

I did not question the fixation of time limit for information of certain types. Often those concerned  do not tell the truth, when they say a specific document has been destroyed. There are certain procedures to be followed for destruction of records and recording such destruction. One should ask for details of the procedure followed and the names of persons who were entrusted with the responsibility of destruction.

Thank you

Response to the criticism of the pragmatic reply Previously posted in this thread

Text-  Further I do not take things lying down, nor do I consider that judgments are to be accepted like scripttttttures without questioning. If one has to abide by a certain judgment that is only for practical reasons. In this Forum one can certainly scientifically analyze a judgment and give an opinion.

Response- Yes,you have every right under, article 19(1) of COI and under article 21 of COI read with RTI act 2005,to express your views. But given this very thread, a question awaited a response in view of law, and not under personal view. I think LCI has provided us a dedicated space to excercise our freedom of expression in the "Article" section. We are bound  by law,and it's our duty to go along with the lex loci and not against it.

Text- Only one Information commissioner Shri Shailesh Gandhi has not agreed with the opinion of other information commissioners. As a result in the Decision given by the Information Commission cited later by the Honorable  Member Shri Sumitra Kumar, the Commissioners have relied on Maxwell’s interpretation of statutes: Generalia specialibus non derogant.

Response- Mr. Shailesh Gandhi decision was in conflict with many information commissioner's decision. Therefore, to create a unison,a full bench including the chief information commissioner "Mr Satyanand Mishra" was made to heard the case. All possible arguments/facts were considered before the final decision came.

Note:  Mr. Sumitra kumar was neither in that bench that gave the decision nor it's in his capacity for the time being. He believes only in as to refer that decision while dealing with questions/cases.

Text-  Acts are acts of Parliament. The price fixations referred to here are made by bodies like the Railway Board, which are subordinate to Parliament. They cannot undo the intentions of the Parliament. In fact one can send an application to the Railway Board asking for the basis and justification of Rs.1000/- per page and also for the minutes of the meeting at which the rate was fixed.

Response-Yes,one can get the information as it's not coming under section(8) of RTI Act 2005.But it's altogether a different matter,unfit to post under the question that started this very thread.

Hope to hear again from you.

Thank you

regards,

What I have done is not merely expressing my personal views or raising academic arguments. The member concerned first posted his query. I gave my reply in order to guide him only.

Then Shri Sumitra Kumar posted a rider to advise the member that though he can get the information, it will be at an exorbitant cost. So I wanted to bring the Sections in the Act in favour of the original member to counter if a situation as foreseen by Shri Sumitra Kumar arose. Shri Sumitra Kumar then posted another case to show that what I stated had already been considered by an enlarged bench of Information Commissioners in another case. Now  my view is that the bench of information commissioners had erred in holding that a departmental diktat shall have precedence over an Act of Parliament. I am surprised that a group of Information Commissioners cannot think otherwise

My advice to the member, who originally posted his query was to proceed along the lines suggested by me, if he so wished. Anyway, if I were to seek similar information, I would proceed in the manner indicated by me.

Mostly judges give decision on the basis of arguments presented before them by the lawyers or litigants, though there are some cases where judges’ suo moto examine alternative possibilities.

If the decision given by the bench is to prevail forever, it will create a dangerous precedent that will defeat the very purpose of the Act.

If any particular department of the Government wants to avoid giving information under RTI, they have only to fix the price of information at a high level. In fact even without RTI Act, fixing of such exorbitant price can be questioned. That is a natural or fundamental right of any person.

Very often for the first appeal, the Officer arranges a hearing with the applicant and the public information officer. There is no provision for any hearing in the Act. The hearings are arranged mostly to hoodwink the applicant with wrong information. I am giving an example.

In our co-operative housing society a member was using his residential flat as a shop. The Secretary told him several times to restore the flat to its original use. But the member ignored the Secretary. Then at one point the Secretary had a suspicion that the member had applied to the Municipality for registration under the Shops & Establishments Act.  I advised the Secretary to get information from the Municipality using RTI. The Secretary asked two questions. (1) Whether the member had applied for a license. and (2) Whether his application was accompanied by NOC from the Society. The Official replied in the affirmative to the first question. But for the second question he maintained that NOC from the Society was not necessary. The Secretary appealed against the reply to the second question. The Senior Officer to whom the appeal went called the Secretary for a hearing. I told the Secretary no to go. But still he went. He reported back to me that there was a Municipal circular saying that NOC from the landlord was not necessary. He showed me the circular. I found that the circular had nothing to do even remotely with the requirement or otherwise of NOC from the Society. Actually he was taken for a ride. A few days later he got the minutes of the meeting. It was very vague and did not say anything about what was actually discussed.

The Secretary, on my advice, made the second appeal to the Information Commissioner. And who was the Information Commissioner?  The infamous Ramanand Tiwari, who was later dismissed from the position. At the meeting with him, he took an aggressive stand against the applicant and challenged him to go to court. It was a very unbecoming behavior on the part of a person occupying a high position as Information Commissioner. Anyway, soon after, he was dismissed and his order never came.

The Secretary did not pursue the matter further, as, by that time, he had obtained a court order in favor of the Society.   

@All readers who come to read this post

In response to the last post,this thread recieved

This time I leave upon the reader's intelligence to understand my views of last post by highlighting the words followed by some points to be noted.

TEXT part-1  what I have done is not merely expressing my personal views or raising academic arguments. The member concerned first posted his query. I gave my reply in order to guide him only.

Then Shri Sumitra Kumar posted a rider to advise the member that though he can get the information, it will be at an exorbitant cost. So I wanted to bring the Sections in the Act in favour of the original member to counter if a situation as foreseen by Shri Sumitra Kumar arose.

TEXT part-2  Now  my view is that the bench of information commissioners had erred in holding that a departmental diktat shall have precedence over an Act of Parliament. I am surprised that a group of Information Commissioners cannot think otherwise

Points to be noted

1. Notice the highlighted words in text part 1 and text part 2(blue background text).Think on your own part now.

2.Notice the text of red(shades of red) in part 1.Notice the word "Then".Now take a look from the very starting point of this thread. Is "then" correct in this context!!!

Rest is the story.

Left to readers

[Last Reply in this thread]

Regards,

This is what I was looking for -fresh air in this lawyersclubofindia . I am going to read all the replies and post my own experiences with Railways as well as CIC .Good night.

Dear Sir

  I want OBC caste certificate for  my baby 's education purpose.I have obc caste certificate But I don;t have residential proff like rent recipt or electriciy bill before 13-10-1967. But my father's Leaving cerftificate shows date as 01-07-1967.

 This Leaving certificate is showing date of admission as 01-07-1967 & certificate is bombay night highschool Can this is enough for proof for resident. Kindly give advice,

Regards

Santosh Gadkar