An RTI applicant has been asked to pay the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for getting information from the Madhya Pradesh Housing and Infrastructure Development Board in Bhopal under the transparency law.

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, the board asked him to pay Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) and the States Goods and Services Tax (SGST) at the rate of 9% each, according to official documents. Mr. Dubey paid ₹43 — ₹36 as photocopy charges for 18 pages (at the rate of ₹2 per page), ₹3.5 as CGST and ₹3.5 as SGST, the documents show.

“It is unfair and illegal for a public authority to charge CGST and SGST for supply of information under the Right to Information Act. I will appeal against this before the appropriate authority,” Mr. Dubey told PTI.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley-led GST Council in January 2018 recommended “to exempt supply of services by way of providing information under RTI Act, 2005 from GST”.

While hearing a case, transparency watchdog Central Information Commission (CIC) in February 2018 said a public authority cannot quote price for information, treating it as goods or service of saleable 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,” the order by Central Information Commissioner M. Sridhar Acharyulu said.