September 2, 2018:
Applicant says GST charges made by the CPIO is illegal and unreasonable.
An RTI applicant has been asked to pay Goods and Services Tax (GST) for getting information from Madhya Pradesh Housing and Infrastructure Development Board under Transparency law.
Exercising his right to know, Anti-Corruption Activist Ajay Dubey had sought details of expenditure on renovation of office of Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA), Madhya Pradesh, from the board.
To his surprise, Board asked him to pay Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) and the States Goods and Services Tax (SGST) at the rate of nine per cent each, According to Official documents.
Dubey paid Rs 43--Rs 36 as photocopy charges for 18 pages (at the rate of Rs two per page), Rs 3.5 as CGST and Rs 3.5 as SGST, the documents show.
He told PTI thatm"It is unfair and illegal for a public authority to charge CGST and SGST for supply of information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. I will appeal against this before the appropriate authority".
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley-led GST Council had in January this year recommended "to exempt supply of services by way of providing information under RTI Act, 2005 from GST".
While hearing a case, Central Information Commission (CIC) had in February stated that public authority cannot quote a price for the information, treating it as goods or service of sellable nature.
"Besides, giving information is not even service, being transparent is the inherent duty of public authority and Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) can only collect the cost of copying charges so that the government exchequer is not affected. Therefore, the demand of GST charges made by the CPIO is illegal and unreasonable," order by Central Information Commissioner M Sridhar Acharyulu had stated in February.
Source PTI
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