Registrar need not open an inquiry first: Supreme Court frees co-operative bank records for member under RTI
Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran held that papers a Registrar can lawfully reach in a private co-operative society are information under Section 2(f), so a member gets the building contract and meeting minutes within two weeks.
A member of a co-operative bank who asked, under the Right to Information Act, 2005, for his bank’s building contract and the minutes of its last general body meeting will have both documents in his hands within two weeks. On 26 October 2026 the Supreme Court dismissed the Muppathadam Service Co-operative Bank’s appeal against a High Court Division Bench ruling that had upheld his claim. Justice K. Vinod Chandran, writing for himself and Justice J.B. Pardiwala, held that the Registrar of Co-operative Societies has a statutory right of free access to a society’s books that does not depend on his first deciding to hold an inquiry, and that documents a public authority can reach in this way are “information” under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act even though the society itself is not a public authority. The judgment, reported as 2026 INSC 1153, is marked reportable.
Two documents, two rounds through the High Court
The applicant, the fourth respondent in the appeal, is a member of the Muppathadam Service Co-operative Bank. He argued his own case before the Supreme Court. His request, made to the Joint Registrar (General) of Co-operative Societies, was for two papers: a copy of the construction agreement between the bank and a Labour Co-operative Society that had been entrusted with putting up a building, and a copy of the minutes of the bank’s most recent general body meeting.
The first application was refused at every level up to the State Information Commissioner. A challenge before a Single Judge of the High Court failed, but a Division Bench sent the matter back for reconsideration. The second round went the other way at every stage. The Commissioner, then the Single Judge, then the Division Bench all affirmed the member’s right to the two documents. The bank brought the Division Bench judgment to the Supreme Court in two special leave petitions, which were converted into Civil Appeal Nos. 13906 and 13907 of 2026.
The Division Bench had reasoned from the words “can access” in Section 2(f) of the RTI Act. In its view, those words emphasised the Registrar’s entitlement to obtain documents from a private body, an entitlement that goes beyond papers already in his physical custody. The statutory power to reach a co-operative society’s records under Section 65 of the Kerala Co-operative Societies Act, 1969, could not be cut down to apply only once an inquiry was already under way. Without those documents, the Division Bench said, the Registrar would be unable to decide whether an inquiry was needed in the first place.
The bank’s case: a private body and a Registrar with no inquiry on foot
Senior counsel S.P. Chaly, for the bank, built the appeal on Thalappalam Service Cooperative Bank Limited v. State of Kerala, (2013) 16 SCC 82. A co-operative society, he argued, is not a “public authority” under the RTI Act. He read the Constitution Bench decision in Central Public Information Officer, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal, (2020) 5 SCC 481, as holding that a public authority’s access to information about a private body, as the RTI Act contemplates it, must not be shackled by restrictions or pre-imposed conditions. The restrictions, in his submission, lay in Sections 65 and 66 of the Kerala Act. The Registrar gets access to a society’s papers only after he records a subjective satisfaction that an inquiry should be conducted. No such satisfaction had been recorded here, and none had been called for when the member’s application was considered. The Joint Registrar should therefore be treated as having no access to the bank’s documents, and the bank, for RTI purposes, remained a private entity standing apart from any public authority.
Abhilash M.R., appearing for the State Information Commissioner, answered that the High Court had sustained access through the competent public authority, which does not require the society to be treated as a public authority under Section 2(h). Whether an inquiry under Section 65 was pending made no difference when the statutory power itself permitted access. Section 66, which gives the Registrar supervisory authority over a society’s functioning, supplied a distinct route to the records, and both documents fell squarely within that supervisory reach. He drew a line between a public authority having lawful custody of documents and a public authority having the power to obtain them from a private entity. The two are distinct, and the second does not require prior physical custody.
The member added a point about the statute’s history. After the RTI Act came into force, the Kerala Act was amended to widen Section 66 by inserting sub-sections (4A) and (11). Sub-section (11) is a non-obstante clause that overrides sub-sections (1) and (2) and gives the Registrar the power to hold an inquiry with the society’s necessary records and to inspect its office periodically. Thalappalam, he said, had nothing to do with the case, because its holding was only that a co-operative society is not itself a public authority. And Subhash Chandra Agarwal, a Constitution Bench ruling, put beyond doubt that a citizen’s right under Section 3 of the RTI Act corresponds to the public authority’s statutory obligation to perform the duties entrusted to it under the Kerala Act.
What “can be accessed by a public authority” means
The Court framed the dispute as a single question: can the Registrar have unfettered access to the documents, and could he, on the request of a member of the bank, access them for the purpose of providing information under the RTI Act? The answer began with Section 2(f). That provision defines “information” to include records, documents, contracts, minutes and much else, and ends with the words “information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force”. The Court underlined that closing phrase.
From it the bench drew a direct conclusion. Information is not only the material physically lying with a public authority. It also takes in material relating to a private body which the public authority can access on the strength of statutory powers conferred on it. The words “can be accessed by a public authority”, the Court said, refer to access that is statutorily provided, and on this point it added: “The power cannot be fettered at all.”
The Court then turned to paragraph 21 of Subhash Chandra Agarwal, the very passage the bank had invoked. There the Constitution Bench explained that the words “under the control of any public authority” in the definition of “right to information” mean the right and power of the public authority to get access to the information, and that they take in information relating to a private body which the authority can access under another law, subject to the pre-imposed conditions and restrictions that apply to such access. The bank had read the final clause as a shield. The Court read it the other way. The passage does not fetter the public authority’s access merely because a condition or restriction attaches to its statutory power. Where access is made subject to a condition, any situation in which the condition is satisfied or the restriction is removed enables the access. And so far as Sections 65 and 66 were concerned, the bench said it did not need to go even that far, because there was no such fetter on the Registrar’s access at all. The prior satisfaction the bank relied on is required only to initiate an inquiry, not to look at the books.
Why Section 65 does not wait for a recorded satisfaction
The bank’s specific contention was that the Registrar can initiate an inquiry only after recording a satisfaction, and only then is he enabled to access a society’s documents. The Court said it was unable to agree, and explained the structure of Section 65 to show why. An inquiry under that section can be started by the Registrar on his own motion, or on the contingencies set out in clauses (b) to (f): a report by the Vigilance Officer or by the Director of Co-operative Audit, or an application made before the Registrar by a majority of the members, by one-third of the quorum for a general body meeting, or by an apex or affiliated society.
The Court called it a trite principle that where a suo motu power is conferred on an authority, it can also be exercised when someone else brings the need for its invocation to the authority’s notice. That is not extraneous to the suo motu power. But whether the Registrar acts on his own or on a report or application from another, he must record a satisfaction about the expediency of exercising the power. That satisfaction cannot be reached in a vacuum. This, the Court said, is precisely why sub-section (2) of Section 65 gives the Registrar, or a person authorised by him, free access at all reasonable times to the books, accounts, documents, securities, cash and other properties belonging to or in the custody of the society. When something amiss comes to the Registrar’s notice, or is brought to it by an application, he can decide whether to initiate an inquiry only after looking at the society’s documents. The bench put the point in one sentence: “Access simpliciter, thus cannot be conditioned with a prior satisfaction”. Without access, no satisfaction is possible.
Section 66 pointed the same way. As the member had argued, it confers supervisory powers and powers of inspection on the Registrar or a person authorised by him. Under sub-section (1) that supervision can be carried out as frequently as the Registrar considers necessary, and it includes an inspection of the books of the society.
Commercial confidence and personal information: the Section 8 exemptions
The bank’s objections on the record also reached clauses (d) and (j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act. To set the frame, the Court extracted paragraphs 24 and 25 of CBSE v. Aditya Bandopadhyay, (2011) 8 SCC 497. Those paragraphs recall that Section 3 gives all citizens the right to information held by or under the control of any public authority, subject to the exclusions and exemptions in Sections 8, 9 and 24; that the object of the Act is to let citizens fight corruption and hold government and its instrumentalities accountable; and that the Act does not reach information held by a private person.
Clause (d) exempts information involving commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property whose disclosure would harm the competitive position of a third party. The Court found that neither document touched any trade secret or intellectual property, nor any commercial confidence affecting anyone’s competitive position. The bidding was over and a Labour Contract Society had already obtained the contract, the terms of which any member of the society would be concerned with.
Clause (j) exempts personal information with no relation to any public activity or interest. The Court held that details of a contract entered into by the bank, and the minutes of its general body meeting, cannot be termed personal information when the person asking for them is a member of the society. That the documents bear no relation to a public activity or interest is not, in that context, significant enough to refuse the request if they are otherwise accessible.
A member, not every citizen
The Court was careful to mark the limits of its ruling. The position would definitely be different, it said, if an identical request came from a third party unconnected with the society. Not every citizen would have the right to ask for these documents. The concept of personal information under Section 8(1)(j) is not confined to a person in flesh and blood; it applies to a private entity too, in whose affairs every citizen cannot be found to have an interest unless those affairs relate to a public activity. Neither the building contract nor the general body meeting concerns a stranger to the society. But a member of the society cannot be denied such information on the ground that it is personal to the society or that it involves no public activity or interest.
On Thalappalam, the Court said the decision preserves the Registrar’s right to seek information from an entity that is not a public authority, including societies, to the extent the law permits, and especially from societies registered under the Co-operative Societies Act over which he has supervision or administrative control, so that he can divulge it to an RTI applicant if the information is not barred by clauses (a) to (j) of Section 8(1). What was sought in Thalappalam was the deposits in members’ bank accounts, which fall within the Section 8(1)(j) exemption. The two documents sought here did not.
Order
The Court found the Division Bench judgment to be perfectly in order, in accordance with the statutory provisions and consistent with the decisions cited, and saw no reason to interfere. It directed the Joint Registrar (General) of Co-operative Societies, the second respondent, to call for the construction agreement and the general body minutes immediately, and in any event within two weeks, and to supply them to the member. Civil Appeal Nos. 13906 and 13907 of 2026 were dismissed. Pending applications were rejected.