Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has made it clear that the Telangana State Beverages Corporation Limited (TSBCL) is not a sovereign authority nor is a part of the legislature but a company registered under the Comp-anies Act, 1956. There-fore the documents procured from the corporation cannot be termed to be public documents.
Dealing with a petition filed by Chamundeswari Wine Shop at Mehdipat-nam, Justice M.S. Rama-chandra Rao set aside the order of a lower court which held that TSBCL was a government organisation and the documents drawn from it were public documents.
A dispute between the partners of the liquor shop related to money recovery led to a case in the city civil court at Hyderabad. Some of them had placed certified copies, secured from the corporation via the RTI Act, before the lower court to show the value of demand drafts paid to the TSBCL by way of business transactions. The trial court considered it a public document by treating the TSBCL as a government organisation.
Aggrieved by the lower court’s decision, the parties approached the High Court contending that the copies issued by the TSBCL could not be treated as public documents according to Sect-ion 74 of the RTI Act.
While dealing with the case, Justice M.S.R. Rao said that TSBCL was not a sovereign authority nor was a part of the legislature, judiciary or the executive of this court or of foreign country or any official body. He said that TSBCL was a company registered under the Companies Act, 1956 as a government company. Therefore the documents procured from the corporation could not be termed to be public documents and set aside the lower court order, which treated them as public documents.
