How RTI fees work and who is exempt
An RTI application under the Right to Information Act, 2005 carries two distinct money components — an application fee payable at the time of filing under Section 6(1) and a cost of supply payable at the production stage under Section 7(1) and Section 7(3). For Central public authorities the rates are set by the Right to Information (Regulation of Fee and Cost) Rules, 2012, which superseded the 2005 Rules of the same name. For State public authorities each State has notified its own rules under Section 28 of the Act, and the rates vary across States. Section 7(5) carves out a complete fee exemption for persons below the poverty line; Section 7(6) extinguishes the cost of supply altogether where the Public Information Officer breaches the thirty-day Section 7(1) timetable; Section 7(3) governs the further-fees intimation that the PIO must send when the cost of supply is to be charged, and frames the route by which an applicant can dispute an excessive demand. The Supreme Court in CBSE v Aditya Bandopadhyay, (2011) 8 SCC 497 and in Namit Sharma v Union of India, (2013) 1 SCC 745 read the fee regime narrowly — as a small filtering deterrent, not as a revenue device.
The fee architecture of the Right to Information Act, 2005 is one of the most-litigated and least-understood corners of the regime. Section 6(1) requires every application to be "accompanied by such fee as may be prescribed"; Section 7(1) requires the Public Information Officer to provide the information sought on payment of "such fee as may be prescribed"; Section 7(3) requires the PIO, on a determination that further fee is payable as cost of supply, to send an intimation specifying the additional amount and the calculations; Section 7(5) exempts persons below the poverty line from "any fee" payable under Section 6 and Section 7; Section 7(6) provides that "notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (5), the person making request for the information shall be provided the information free of charge where a public authority fails to comply with the time-limits specified in sub-section (1)". The actual rates — the ten-rupee application fee, the two-rupee per-page cost of supply, the fifty-rupee electronic-media charge, the inspection-of-records rule — are not in the parent Act at all; they are in the subordinate legislation issued under Sections 27 and 28. This article unpacks the layered structure and walks the route to disputing an excessive demand.
The two layers of the fee regime — Central and State
The first thing to grasp about the RTI fee regime is that it is not unitary. Section 27 of the Act empowers the Central Government to make rules for "any matter for which under this Act, provision may be, or is required to be, made by rules", including the prescription of fees payable under Section 6(1) and the costs payable under Section 7(1) and Section 7(5). Section 28 confers the corresponding rule-making power on every State Government for State public authorities, and on every "competent authority" — the Supreme Court, the High Courts, Parliament, State Legislatures and the like — for public authorities under its administrative control. The result is a federally fragmented fee regime in which the Central rules, the State rules, and the rules of competent authorities each set their own rates within the framework of the parent Act.
The Central rules. For Central public authorities — every Ministry, Department and attached or subordinate office of the Central Government, every body created by Parliament, every body owned, controlled or substantially financed by the Central Government — the fee is governed by the Right to Information (Regulation of Fee and Cost) Rules, 2012, which superseded the Right to Information (Fee and Cost) Rules, 2005 of the same name. The 2012 Rules fix the application fee under Section 6(1) at ten rupees. The cost of supply under Section 7(1) is two rupees per page of A4 or A3 paper for documents produced in photocopy; the actual cost or price for printed publications; fifty rupees per diskette or floppy for information supplied in electronic form; and the actual cost in any other case. For inspection of records, the first hour is free and twenty rupees per hour is charged thereafter. The mode of payment under the 2012 Rules is by demand draft, banker's cheque, Indian Postal Order, cash against receipt — and, for applications routed through the Central Government's online RTI portal, by net banking, credit or debit card.
The State rules. Every State Government has notified its own rules under Section 28 for State public authorities — every Department of the State Government, every body created by State law, every body substantially financed by the State Government. Most States have fixed the application fee at ten rupees, mirroring the Central rate. A handful of States set the rate lower (Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have at various points charged five rupees) and a handful set it higher (Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha at fifty rupees in earlier iterations; rates are revised periodically). The per-page cost of supply ranges from two to five rupees across States. The mode-of-payment options also vary — many States accept court-fee stamps, banker's cheques or cash; some States have notified their own online RTI portals with card or net-banking integration. The practical rule is to consult the website of the State Information Commission or the State Government's administrative reforms department for the current rate sheet before filing.
Competent-authority rules. The Supreme Court, the High Courts, the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Secretariats, and the various State Legislatures have each notified their own RTI rules under Section 28 covering both fees and procedure. The Supreme Court's rules — the Supreme Court of India (Right to Information) Rules, 2005 — fix a higher application fee and a higher per-page cost of supply than the Central rules; the Delhi High Court Rules, the Bombay High Court Rules and the various other High Court rules each set their own rates. The validity of the higher fees has been challenged from time to time on the ground that they have a chilling effect on the right; the courts have so far upheld the rates on the ground that the competent-authority rule-making power under Section 28 is independent of the Central rule-making power under Section 27.
Section 7(5) — the below-poverty-line exemption
The most important fee carve-out in the Act is Section 7(5). It provides that "no fee under sub-section (1) of section 6 and sub-sections (1) and (5) of section 7 shall be charged from the persons who are of below poverty line as may be determined by the appropriate Government". The exemption is total — it covers both the application fee and the cost of supply, and it applies regardless of the number of pages or the mode of supply.
Establishing the BPL claim. Neither the parent Act nor the 2012 Rules prescribe a single form of proof for the Section 7(5) exemption. The settled practice across Central and State public authorities is to accept either a copy of the BPL ration card or a self-attested copy of the BPL certificate issued by the competent State authority. The 2012 Rules require the applicant claiming the exemption to enclose this proof with the application; in its absence the PIO is entitled to treat the application as one not accompanied by the prescribed fee and to seek the fee. The standard of proof is not exacting — the Central Information Commission has repeatedly held that a refusal of the Section 7(5) exemption on the strength of a procedural objection (the card is in the name of another household member, the certificate is older than a stated period, the photocopy is unclear) is unsustainable in the absence of evidence that the applicant is not in fact a BPL person.
What the exemption does not cover. The Section 7(5) exemption is a fee exemption only. It does not extend to (a) the postage cost of dispatching the records to the applicant where dispatch is sought (the 2012 Rules treat postage as part of the cost of supply but several States separately charge it), (b) the cost of certified copies obtained under any other statute (Court Fees Act, Registration Act, Companies Act) for which the RTI exemption is inapplicable, or (c) the costs of any appeal to the First Appellate Authority under Section 19(1) or to the Information Commission under Section 19(3) — neither the Central rules nor most State rules charge a separate appeal fee, but where one is charged the BPL exemption is generally read across by the Commission as a matter of practice.
Section 7(6) — free of charge when the PIO is late
The second important carve-out — and the more frequently triggered one in practice — is Section 7(6). It provides that "notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (5), the person making request for the information shall be provided the information free of charge where a public authority fails to comply with the time limits specified in sub-section (1)". The clumsy "notwithstanding sub-section (5)" formulation is a drafting artefact — the provision is read as a positive entitlement that operates independently of the BPL exemption: where the PIO misses the thirty-day deadline (or the forty-eight-hour deadline in life-or-liberty cases), the cost of supply that would otherwise have been chargeable under the 2012 Rules or the State rules is forfeited and the records are to be supplied free.
What triggers the Section 7(6) consequence. The trigger is the failure of the PIO to "comply with the time limits specified in sub-section (1)" — that is, the thirty-day default, or the forty-eight-hour life-or-liberty timetable, or the forty-day third-party timetable where Section 11 is engaged. The clock runs from the date of receipt of the application by the PIO (or from the date of receipt of the transferred application under Section 6(3) where the original application went to the wrong public authority). A partial response within the period, with the rest of the records communicated later, does not stop the clock for the records that are produced late; the prevailing view at the Commission level is that the Section 7(6) benefit attaches to the records not produced within the period, not to the application as a whole.
The Section 7(6) free-of-charge entitlement is automatic. The applicant does not have to invoke it expressly; the PIO is under a positive duty to apply the rule when the records are supplied beyond the period. The Central Information Commission has consistently directed PIOs who collected the cost of supply for records supplied beyond the thirty-day window to refund the amount and has imposed the Section 20 penalty on PIOs who insisted on payment in the teeth of Section 7(6). The Section 7(6) consequence is therefore a powerful enforcement spine — it converts every delay into a forfeiture of revenue for the public authority, which is supposed to incentivise timely disposal.
Section 7(3) — the further-fees intimation
The architecture of Section 7(3) is sometimes misunderstood. The provision applies after the PIO has examined the application and determined that the records sought are disclosable and a cost of supply is payable. At that stage the PIO is required to send an intimation to the applicant specifying (a) the further fee representing the cost of supply, "giving the calculations made to arrive at the amount in accordance with fee prescribed under sub-section (1), requesting him to deposit that fee", and (b) the period of fifteen days, ordinarily, within which the applicant is required to deposit the amount, failing which the application is liable to be treated as lapsed.
Three points about Section 7(3) deserve emphasis. First, the intimation must contain the calculations — a bare demand of "rupees X please remit" is non-compliant. The page count, the rate per page, the mode-of-supply heading, and the total must be set out. Second, the period under Section 7(1) and Section 7(2) — that is, the thirty-day clock for disposal — is excluded by Section 7(3) of "the period intervening between the despatch of the said intimation and payment of fees". That is, the clock pauses on the date the further-fees intimation is despatched and resumes on the date the fee is paid. This is the only suspension of the thirty-day clock the Act recognises. Third, the Section 7(3) intimation, if it follows an over-inclusive calculation or a calculation at a rate higher than the rules prescribe, is itself appealable as part of the PIO's "decision" under Section 19(1) — disputing an excessive demand is not separately barred.
Disputing an excessive demand — Section 19 first appeal and Section 18 complaint
Where the applicant believes that the further-fees demand under Section 7(3) is excessive — that the page count is inflated, the rate per page is higher than the Central or State rules prescribe, or the mode of supply has been recalculated to extract a higher charge — two parallel routes are available.
Section 19(1) first appeal. The Section 7(3) intimation is treated by the Commissions as a "decision" of the PIO appealable under Section 19(1). The first appeal lies to the officer senior in rank to the PIO within thirty days of receipt of the intimation. The First Appellate Authority can — and does — recompute the fee, set aside an over-inclusive page count, or compress the mode of supply where the PIO has chosen an unnecessarily expensive medium. The First Appellate Authority's order is binding on the PIO and the applicant gets the records on payment of the revised fee.
Section 18 complaint. Section 18(1)(d) explicitly empowers the Information Commission to receive and inquire into a complaint from any person "who has been required to pay an amount of fee which he considers unreasonable". The Section 18 route does not require a prior first appeal — the Commission can take up the complaint directly. The Commission's power on a Section 18 complaint is one of inquiry and disciplinary recommendation; the Supreme Court in Chief Information Commissioner v State of Manipur, (2011) 15 SCC 1 read Section 18 as distinct from the Section 19 appellate route on the merits, but the Commissions in practice direct the public authority to recompute the fee where the complaint is upheld.
The Common Cause litigation. Excessive fee demands have been at the heart of public-interest challenges to specific State rules and to the rules of particular competent authorities. Common Cause (A Registered Society) v Union of India — the long-running RTI public-interest litigation that the Supreme Court has heard in various avatars since the Act came into force — has on multiple occasions taken up State fee notifications that the petitioner argued had a chilling effect on the right. The Court has steadily emphasised the Aditya Bandopadhyay caution against fees so high that they extinguish the right, while declining to strike down fees in the ten-to-fifty-rupee band as unreasonable.
Mode of payment and the receipt issue
The 2012 Rules and most State rules permit payment by demand draft, banker's cheque, Indian Postal Order, court-fee stamp (where notified) and cash against receipt. The online RTI portals for the Central Government and for States that have notified them additionally permit net banking, credit and debit card payments. Two practical issues recur.
The Indian Postal Order route. The IPO is the cheapest and most reliable instrument for postal RTI applications and is universally accepted. The IPO must be drawn in favour of "The Accounts Officer" (or such designation as the public authority's rules prescribe) of the public authority concerned. Confusion about the payee designation is a frequent reason for procedural rejection — the IPO drawn in favour of the wrong officer is treated as a non-accompaniment of the prescribed fee and the application is liable to be returned for cure. The cure does not start the thirty-day clock again from the date of the original filing; the clock starts from the date of receipt of the corrected application.
The receipt issue. Where the application is delivered by hand at the public authority's premises, the applicant is entitled to a dated acknowledgement of receipt — typically a stamped acknowledgement on the duplicate copy of the application. The acknowledgement is the proof of the date from which the thirty-day clock runs. Where the application is sent by registered or speed post, the postal receipt and the tracking record perform the same function. The Section 7(6) free-of-charge consequence of delay turns entirely on the date of receipt; without proof of receipt the applicant cannot establish the trigger.
Common errors that produce excessive demands
Three patterns account for most excessive-fee disputes at the first-appeal and Commission level.
Inflated page counts. The two-rupee per-page rate is per page of records actually disclosed. PIOs occasionally include in the page count records that are exempt under Section 8 and are not in fact being supplied — particularly where the rejection is partial under Section 10 and the disclosable portion runs to fewer pages than the rejected portion. The remedy is to ask the PIO, in the first appeal, to recompute the fee on the basis of the pages actually supplied.
Wrong rate for the mode of supply. A PIO who chooses to supply records in printed form when the applicant has asked for inspection or for electronic form may compute the cost at a higher rate than the 2012 Rules prescribe for inspection (first hour free, twenty rupees per hour thereafter) or for electronic media (fifty rupees per diskette). Section 7(9) entitles the applicant to seek the records "in the form in which it is sought unless it would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority or would be detrimental to the safety or preservation of the record"; a refusal to follow the applicant's chosen mode of supply must be specifically reasoned, and the cost cannot be recomputed at a higher-mode rate without first establishing that the cheaper mode falls foul of Section 7(9).
State-rule confusion across jurisdictions. Where an application is filed against a Central public authority under the 2012 Rules but the PIO computes the fee at the rate notified by the relevant State Government's rules (or vice versa), the cost computation is jurisdictionally wrong. The applicable rule is the rule of the public authority addressed — Central for Central public authorities, State for State public authorities, competent-authority rules for the constitutional courts and legislatures. The fee schedule of the wrong jurisdiction has no application.
Outcome — what the fee architecture produces
The RTI fee regime, read across the parent Act and the subordinate legislation, produces a small filtering deterrent — ten rupees in most cases, with a per-page cost of supply pegged at two rupees for Central public authorities — that is meant to keep frivolous applications in check without raising a barrier to genuine ones. The Section 7(5) BPL exemption removes the deterrent entirely for the poorest applicants. The Section 7(6) free-of-charge rule removes the cost of supply altogether where the PIO is late. The Section 7(3) further-fees architecture forces the PIO to set out the calculations and gives the applicant a clear handle for first-appeal or Section 18-complaint review. The Supreme Court in CBSE v Aditya Bandopadhyay, (2011) 8 SCC 497, in Namit Sharma v Union of India, (2013) 1 SCC 745 and in Central Public Information Officer, Supreme Court of India v Subhash Chandra Agarwal, (2020) 5 SCC 481 has read the regime as one of accountability — the fee is to filter, not to fence.
The practical lesson is that the cost of an RTI application is almost always less than its sticker price. An applicant who can establish BPL pays nothing; an applicant who cannot but encounters a delayed response pays only the application fee and not the cost of supply; an applicant who faces an inflated cost-of-supply demand has both the Section 19(1) first appeal and the Section 18 complaint route to dispute it. The barriers to filing — once well understood — are smaller than they look.
The contested questions — whether competent-authority rules (Supreme Court, High Courts) can prescribe materially higher rates than the Central rules without offending the equality-in-access principle the Court has read into Article 19(1)(a); whether the Section 7(6) free-of-charge consequence attaches to a partial response delivered within the period and the balance later; the periodic State-level revisions of the application fee, particularly in States that have at times charged fifty rupees — are working themselves out at the Commission and High Court levels. The operating manual until they are settled is the parent Act read with the 2012 Rules for Central public authorities and the corresponding State rules for State public authorities.