Application in pending plea before Delhi HC asserting that PMNRF is a public authority under RTI

“Furthermore, all disbursements from PMNRF are made solely at the discretion of the Prime Minister. He or she is a public authority and decisions taken by him or her concerning the operation of the PMNRF cannot be said to be made in a personal capacity. The decisions of the Prime Minister in this regard must be taken to be official decisions,” the application states.

In April 2020, Batra filed an RTI application with the Prime Minister’s Office seeking information on the creation of the fund, entrusting the fund to the Prime Minister and the selection of a chartered accountant for conducting the audit, among others, the application reads. The Central Public Information Officer of the PMO did not respond to the application within 30 days after which Batra approached the first appellate authority which directed the CPIO to give a final response in 25 days.

When this direction was not adhered to, Batra approached the Central Information Commission which disposed of the RTI plea on account of the pendency of the issue of the fund coming under the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act before the Delhi high court. The application states that when Batra’s RTI query was pending, the authorities said that they were not bound to share information as PMNRF was not a “public authority” and that all contributions to the fund are “voluntary” in nature.

The application further states that the PMNRF website shows that it accepts only “voluntary contributions from individuals, trusts, organisations, etc”. The application states that Batra had submitted before the CIC that this claim of the fund is negated after the 2018 Electoral Bond Scheme of the government which provides for “automatic depositing of the number of electoral bonds not cashed within the validity period of 15 days directly to the Appellant body”.

The application states that this “by no stretch of imagination can be termed as a ‘voluntary donation”. Batra had sought a recommendation from the CIC to the concerned authorities to change/amend/remove the fund’s claim, the plea states. Batra has prayed that the intervention application is allowed and has further sought direction from the Authority/PMNRF to provide the information sought by him in his RTI application.

The pending plea wherein the application has been filed, is moved by the PMNRF challenging CIC’s order to place details of institutional donors of PMNRF in the public domain and to disclose the information to one Aseem Takyar, another RTI applicant. A single judge of HC in 2015 dismissed the plea without giving a finding on whether the fund is a public authority or not. Due to a difference of opinion, a division bench on May 23, 2018, referred the matter to be decided by a third judge (single judge).