Unnecessary amendment: on the RTI Act

That the Right to Information Act and the use of RTIs have enhanced the accountability of those in governance in India goes without saying. In the last few years there have been attempts to dilute the provisions of the Act, a landmark one that was passed 20 years ago. Clearly, some in governance and administration have treated the Act and its provisions on transparency and disclosure to be encumbrances. A significant threat has now emerged in the amendment to Section 8(1)(j) of the Act, which has been introduced in Section 44(3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023. The Act itself is an outcome of K.S. Puttaswamy (2017), a judgment that upheld the right of privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution. Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act allows government bodies to withhold “information which relates to public information” provided its disclosure is not related to public interest or results in an unnecessary invasion of privacy. While doing so, it provides the safeguard that if the Public Information Officer or an appellate authority finds public interest in disclosing such information, it could still be available. This safeguard is important. Some information related to public servants, such as college degrees or caste certificates, might be private, but as a recent and controversial case of a bureaucrat using a fake caste certificate showed, such information could be released in public interest. Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act amends Section 8(1)(j) by allowing government bodies to simply withhold “personal information” without the safeguard provisions on public interest or other such exceptions.

In a letter to Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Ashwini Vaishnaw defended the amendment, saying that Section 44(3) was aimed at preventing the RTI Act’s “misuse” and was to harmonise the requirement of right to privacy and the right to information. He also said that information such as salaries of public officials would still remain accessible through Section 3 of the DPDP Act. But by amending the RTI Act itself — an outcome that was never the intention of K.S. Puttaswamy — and by defining “personal information” vaguely in Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act, authorities could deny RTI requests of previously public data by classifying them as “personal” — and lessen public scrutiny. The RTI Act already harmonises concerns related to the right to information and privacy by subjecting them to the question of public interest. Therefore, the amendment using the DPDP Act is unnecessary and unwarranted. The government must take the concerns of civil society and transparency activists and remove the provision amending the RTI Act, in the DPDP Act.