The Hindu: New Delhi: Saturday, March 22, 2025.
The RTI Act’s qualified exemption on providing personal information is on track to become a blanket prohibition, alarming activists, who have called on the government to reverse course
Over 30 civil society
organisations are urging the Union government to avoid gutting the Right to
Information Act, 2005, the National Council for People’s Right to Information
(NCPRI) announced on Friday (March 21, 2025). An amendment to the RTI Act passed
in 2023 which has not yet come into effect would drastically limit the amount
of information that government agencies would be required to share, activists
said, upping pressure on the government to keep the law intact.
The issue is around Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI’: Act, which allows government agencies to refuse applications for information if they relate to an individual’s personal information. “Studies show that this exemption is among the most common grounds to refuse information” from being provided, Nikhil Dey, an NCPRI co-convenor, said at a press conference on Friday.
However, the section has a proviso, which allows for personal information to be disclosed if there is public interest in doing so. This has allowed RTI activists over the years to conduct so-called social audits, such as verifying if rations were indeed distributed to people that a dispensary claims they were, by obtaining its log sheets and visiting households one by one.
In 2023, the Union government, in spite of NCPRI and other civil society organisations’ protests, removed the proviso altogether through an Act of Parliament, imposing a blanket prohibition on providing personal information, no matter what. This was done through the last section of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which is otherwise concerned with setting guidelines for securing Indians’ personal information on digital platforms.
Since the subordinate legislation for kicking in the DPDP Act has not yet been notified, the amendment has not kicked in. The draft DPDP Rules, 2025, should in their final form not notify this amendment, and Parliament should pass a law undoing the amendment from the Act as well, said Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convenor of the NCPRI.
The other organisations supporting this effort include the Article 21 Trust, the Center for Financial Accountability, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, and the Software Freedom Law Center, India.
The Union government has not addressed these concerns in detail, with officials simply saying that the Supreme Court’s judgement that personal privacy was a fundamental right was now in conflict with the RTI Act. Activists strongly rebuked this argument.
M.M. Ansari, a former Central Information Commissioner, said the proviso was already “very balanced” since it provided adequate safeguards for personal information but also recognised the circumstances under which such information should be disclosed. Mr. Ansari recounted several instances where the CIC often ordered disclosure of personal information including when there were questions about educational qualifications of elected representatives, and decision making processes on important policy matters.
The RTI Act’s qualified exemption on providing personal information is on track to become a blanket prohibition, alarming activists, who have called on the government to reverse course
The issue is around Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI’: Act, which allows government agencies to refuse applications for information if they relate to an individual’s personal information. “Studies show that this exemption is among the most common grounds to refuse information” from being provided, Nikhil Dey, an NCPRI co-convenor, said at a press conference on Friday.
However, the section has a proviso, which allows for personal information to be disclosed if there is public interest in doing so. This has allowed RTI activists over the years to conduct so-called social audits, such as verifying if rations were indeed distributed to people that a dispensary claims they were, by obtaining its log sheets and visiting households one by one.
In 2023, the Union government, in spite of NCPRI and other civil society organisations’ protests, removed the proviso altogether through an Act of Parliament, imposing a blanket prohibition on providing personal information, no matter what. This was done through the last section of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which is otherwise concerned with setting guidelines for securing Indians’ personal information on digital platforms.
Since the subordinate legislation for kicking in the DPDP Act has not yet been notified, the amendment has not kicked in. The draft DPDP Rules, 2025, should in their final form not notify this amendment, and Parliament should pass a law undoing the amendment from the Act as well, said Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convenor of the NCPRI.
The other organisations supporting this effort include the Article 21 Trust, the Center for Financial Accountability, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, and the Software Freedom Law Center, India.
The Union government has not addressed these concerns in detail, with officials simply saying that the Supreme Court’s judgement that personal privacy was a fundamental right was now in conflict with the RTI Act. Activists strongly rebuked this argument.
M.M. Ansari, a former Central Information Commissioner, said the proviso was already “very balanced” since it provided adequate safeguards for personal information but also recognised the circumstances under which such information should be disclosed. Mr. Ansari recounted several instances where the CIC often ordered disclosure of personal information including when there were questions about educational qualifications of elected representatives, and decision making processes on important policy matters.
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