Co-operative Society – Uttar Pradesh Cooperative Societies Act, 1965 providing that every Co-operative Society shall be covered by the Right to Information Act, 2005 is unconstitutional.

Before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court, a challenge was raised to the constitutional validity of the provisions of section 113(2) of the Uttar Pradesh Cooperative Societies Act, 1965 whereby the state legislature enacted a provision which stipulated that the Right to Information Act, 2005 – enacted by Parliament – shall cover all cooperative societies in the state.

The provision of section 113(2) is as under : “113(2) Every co-operative society shall be covered by the Right to Information Act, 2005.”

The challenge to the constitutional validity of section 113(2) was premised on the basis that as a result of the amendment, all co-operative societies in the State were brought within the purview of the RT I Act, enacted by the Parliament, irrespective of whether or not these cooperative societies constituted public authorities within the meaning of section 2(h) of the Central Act, i.e. the RT I Act.

The Court held that the issue which was required to be considered was whether the state legislature could, by a legislative amendment to the Act, have mandated that all cooperative societies in the State would be governed by the RT I Act.

The court further held that unless the state legislature is competent to enact a law on the subject, it would not be open to it to provide that the RT I Act which has been enacted by the Parliament must apply to all co-operative societies in the State. This was clearly impermissible and fell outside the legislative competence of the state legislature. Hence, the provisions of section 113(2) were held to be unconstitutional.