Supreme Court holds a cooperative society member can obtain its records under the Right to Information Act through the Registrar

26 October 2026

In The Muppathadam Service Co-Operative Bank Ltd. v. State Chief Information Commissioner, decided on 26 October, the Supreme Court held that a member of a cooperative society cannot be denied information about the society's affairs merely because the society is not itself a public authority. The bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran read Section 2(f) of the Right to Information Act, 2005 to cover information held by a private body that a public authority can access under another law. The Court relied on the Registrar's supervisory and inspection powers under Section 66 of the Kerala Co-operative Societies Act, 1969. It rejected the society's reliance on the commercial confidence exemption in Section 8(1)(d) and the personal information exemption in Section 8(1)(j). The judgment follows the earlier rulings in Thalappalam Service Cooperative Bank Ltd. v. State of Kerala and CPIO, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal.