Tamil Nadu Information Commission Rules Tiruppur Water Supply Project as a Public Authority and hence RTI is Applicable on the PPP project
Thursday 17 April 2008 by Manthan Adhyayan Kendra
The Rs. 1023 crore Tiruppur Water Supply and Sewarage Project located near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu is the country’s biggest Public Private Partnership (PPP) project in the water sector. As it is a project of public importance, Manthan Adhyayan Kendra has been studying it as a part of its study of privatisation in the water sector. For this study, Manthan requested information from the Project under the Right to Information Act including details of the equity and debt structure of the project. The project authorities refused to give it, saying that they were not a public project. This is in spite of the considerable financial contribution and other support by the Government of Tamil Nadu.
Manthan therefore moved the Tamil Nadu Information Commission challenging this refusal, and the Commission heard the matter on 14 March 2008. In its Order (approved 24 March 2008), the Commission unequivocally rejected the plea of the company and accepted Manthan’s contention that the project be treated as Public Authority. It ruled that the project should provide us with the information sought within 15 days.
The text of the Order is given at the end and a scanned copy order can be downloaded by clicking the icon.
We believe that this Order is of considerable broader importance as both, State and Central Governments are rushing to push large number of Public Private Partnership projects in many sectors including water. As the PPP projects are in areas that will affect Public interest, it is important that they be transparent to the public. The private companies would want to take recourse to the argument of commercial secrecy to deny information. Hence, this Order becomes important.
We are still awaiting the information from Tiruppur Project in compliance of the order. Manthan was represented by Advocate Ravi Chandran in Chennai.
For the report of the study of the Tiruppur Project by Manthan, please Click Here.
Rehmat and Gaurav Dwivedi
17 April 2008
TEXT OF THE ORDER
TAMIL NADU INFORMATION COMMISSION
Case No:31422/enquiry/2006
Date of hearing on 14.3.08
Present:
Thiru G. Ramakrishnan IAS (retd). State Information Commissioner
Petitioner: Thiru Rehmat / Gaurav Dwivedi Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, Dashera Maidan Road , Badwani (MP) 451551 Public Authority: The Public Information Officers/Chief Financial Officer New Tiruppur Area Development Corp Ltd, No 15 Murray’s Gate Road, Alwarpet, Chennai 600 018
The Petitioner was represented by an Advocate Thiru Ravi Chandran. The representative of the Public Authorities viz. the Chief Financial Officer, New Tiruppur Area Development Corp Ltd, Chennai argued that their organisation is not a "Public Authority" as defined under the Act and he filed a report also in support of his argument. The arguments were carefully considered and the commission comes to the unmistakable conclusion that their organisation is a Public Authority as defined under Section 2 (h) (d) of the Act in view of the public funding and government control involved. Hence the Public Authority is directed to supply the information within 15 days from the date of the receipt of the orders and report compliance.
STATE INFORMATION COMMISSION
Orders approved days the 24th March, 2008.