The Commission has decided to issue the following guidelines for registration of Complaint as prescribed under Rule 8 and 9 of the RTI Rules, 2012:
Documents required for registration of Complaint:
- Complaint duly signed and addressed to the Commission
- Copy of the RTI application submitted to the CPIO or the RTI application which could not be submitted
- RTI and Complaint shall be related to each other
- Above two documents must be legible
- Above two documents must be in Hindi/English or provide a translated version in Hindi /English
Other documents required for proper presentation of complaint, if available
- Copy of reply received from the CPIO
- Copy of the order received from the First Appellate Authority
- Copies of other documents relied upon by the Complainant and referred to in his Complaint
- An index of the documents
- All the documents shall be duly authenticated and verified by the Complainant
The mandatory time period for filing Complaint:
- Complaint can be filed immediately if CPIO of Public Authority refuses to accept RTI Application as per RTI Act 2005.
- After receipt of reply to RTI application or thirty days after filing of RTI application and if no reply received
- After receipt of reply from First Appellate Authority or forty-five days after filing of First appeal, if the Complainant had chosen to file first appeal and no reply had been received.
Registration of Complaint as second appeal
- During scrutiny of Complaint, if it is found that Complainant has requested for the information along with the imposition of penalty, the complaint would be registered as Second Appeal, provided first appeal had been filed by the Complainant.
Complaint will not be registered if any of the following condition exists
- - If the Complaint has already been registered by the Commission with same RTI(Duplicate Case)
- Body mentioned as a Public Authority in the Complaint is not registered with the Commission as Public Authority and justification for declaring the body as a Public Authority has not been given by the Complainant
- Complaint relates to State information Commission. In such a case, the Complaint shall be sent to the concerned State Information Commission.
- Complaint relates to multiple RTI application /CPIO’s replies /First Appeals. In such cases the Complaint shall be returned along with all the documents.
In case of offline Appeal/Complaint filed by the applicant, he/she will be informed by the dealing official whether the same prime facia fulfils the requirements for its registration.
Additional guidelines for facilitating disposal of the case:
- If the complaint is being filed without submission of RTI application to the Public Authority , the reasons of non -submission of RTI application should be mentioned
- The complainant should mention the specific sub- section of section 18 of RTI Act under which the complaint is being filed .
- Provide a copy of proof of submission of copy of complaint to the Public authority, if available
- If the complaint is made on the ground that information concerning life or liberty was not given within 48 hours as per proviso to Section 7 (1), it should contain reasons for considering the information requested as concerning the life or liberty
- To give reasons for considering a body as Public authority ,if the ground of complaint is that the concerned body was not considering itself to be Public authority
Help in filing Complaint:
- ** For additional help kindly see FAQ, Supreme Court / High Courts orders
- Contact Help desk at 011-26767500 Email : fdesk-cic[at]gov[dot]in for assistance in filing complaint.
- To enable Commission to help you, please provide your mobile no. and e-mail address in all communications.
