The Karnataka Excessive Courtroom has held that Century Membership, situated on 7.5 acres of land offered by the then Maharaja of Mysore close to Cubbon Park in Bengaluru, is a public authority and therefore comes underneath the purview of the Proper To Info (RTI) Act. The order was handed on July 8 by a Bench consisting of Justice Suraj Govindaraj, dismissing a petition by the Membership.
The Century Membership moved the Excessive Courtroom difficult a Karnataka Info Fee ruling in 2018 that ordered the membership to supply a lawyer a licensed copy of sure information in 2012 underneath the RTI Act. The membership had earlier denied the lawyer, S Umapathy, the information, stating that it was not a “public authority” as outlined underneath the RTI Act.
The membership’s counsel argued earlier than the Excessive Courtroom that merely as a result of the preliminary 7.5 acres of land for the membership was offered by the Maharaja in 1913, it could not quantity to “substantial financing” by the state authorities. He argued that, as per Supreme Courtroom precedent, for it to be a case of considerable funding, the physique should be primarily run by it. However, the land was granted by the Maharaja because the membership’s patron, whereas the membership was run by member dues, the counsel mentioned.
The Bench noticed that it was the state’s land and never private property that was granted. “There isn’t a cost which has been made by the petitioner-club to the Maharaja of Mysore or the Kingdom of Mysore. The grant made within the identify of the Maharaja of Mysore would additionally point out that it’s not the non-public property of the Maharaja of Mysore,” the Bench acknowledged.
Umapathy argued that “substantial funding” existed because the membership couldn’t exist with out the land. He added that because the Maharaja was the top of a princely state, the identical would depend as a grant made by the federal government. He additionally raised the truth that the land within the centre of the town was of appreciable worth.
Upholding the Karnataka Info Fee’s preliminary discovering, the Bench acknowledged, “if the valuation of the land of seven.5 acres as on at present is considered, the identical would run into lots of of crores if not 1000’s, the contribution made by the members of the petitioners-club, as membership charges or some other head of account pales into insignificance. In that view of the matter, it’s clearly and categorically established that there’s a substantial contribution made by the State via the Maharaja of Mysore, who granted 7.5 acres of land to the petitioner-club in 1913, thereby making the provisions of the RTI Act relevant.”