The Right to Deny Information is here

The Right to Information (RTI) Act came into force in India on 12 October 2005. It is one the strongest transparency laws in the world. It essentially says that if any information cannot be denied to a lawmaker, i.e. an MP or MLA, then it cannot be denied to a citizen of India. It puts citizens on par with the so-called rulers, who are actually people’s representatives.

The RTI Act gave citizens a legally enforceable right to ask questions of the State and expect answers. It empowered citizens to hold government agencies accountable.

The law was the culmination of nearly two decades of a grassroots movement for accountability. The movement started with the simple premise that citizens have a right to say: ‘It’s our money, so we want to know how it is spent (hamara paisa, hamara hisaab).' RTI gives the citizen a right to ask questions and obliges the State to answer them.

Over the last two decades, RTI has exposed corruption, improved the delivery of welfare benefits, enabled public scrutiny of procurement, pensions, ration systems and infrastructure spending. Even electoral finances. It has empowered ordinary citizens to challenge opacity in local administration. For many, it became their only shield against arbitrary exercise of power.

The law really empowered ordinary citizens. But because it gave them this power, it also extracted a heavy price. At least a hundred RTI users have been murdered for seeking information that threatened vested interests.

Today, this hard-won democratic tool faces its most serious threat yet. There is danger that the right to information will become the right to deny information. This threat to the Right to Information comes from the passage of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023. Section 44(3) of this new law amends the RTI Act itself, amending Section 8(1)(j).

The original text of this section of the RTI Act had a public-interest override clause, permitting disclosure of personal information if justified in larger public interest. This override clause was crucial. It recognised that transparency and accountability are the foundations of democratic governance. The DPDP Act has removed this override, making privacy a near-absolute shield, unless the government decides otherwise.

The amendment to the RTI has turned a careful balancing test into a default veto, allowing public information officers to refuse disclosure simply by citing privacy.

The DPDP Act also expands the definition of ‘person’ to include companies, associations and even the State, meaning that even corporate–government contracts could theoretically be shielded as personal data. This is not a legal technicality; it changes the character of the RTI Act itself.

Where information was once presumed to be open and available, unless denied on particular grounds, now information will be presumed to be not available unless the State chooses to make it available. The power has shifted from the citizens to the State.

The original dent in weakening RTI came not from DPDP legislation but from the judiciary. In Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. CIC (2012), the Supreme Court held that information about disciplinary proceedings and service records of a public servant constituted ‘personal information’ and therefore could be withheld under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act. The court treated this as a matter between employee and employer, without acknowledging that the real employer of public servants is the public itself.

That judgement became a template for routine denial of information. Once anything involving a person could be called ‘personal’, even data related to public duties — such as leave records, caste certificates used for official claims, or expenditure from MP or MLA funds — began to be withheld.

The situation worsened after the Puttaswamy (2017) judgement, where privacy was recognised as a fundamental right, an important and welcome development in itself. But in the absence of careful balancing, privacy began to override transparency, even where public interest was clear and compelling.

There has also been a steady institutional erosion of the RTI from its early days. Across 29 Central and state information commissions, more than four lakh appeals are pending, many for over a year. Several commissions are non-functional, and key posts have remained vacant for extended periods.

So, even before the latest changes in the DPDP Act, the delays in key appointments, the fading autonomy of the information commission and rising pendency had already weakened the RTI — a slow suffocation that discouraged citizens from even filing applications.

We must remember that the RTI was not born in Parliament; it was born in village meetings, street protests, hunger strikes, public hearings and citizen mobilisation. The same kind of mobilisation, the same collective will is needed again, to demand:

1. Restoration of the public-interest override clause. Privacy does matter, but accountability in public finances and restraints on corruption and abuse of state power are more important

2. Reinstatement of the proviso that information that cannot be denied to Parliament cannot be denied any citizen. This principle sits at the heart of democratic equality

3. All vacancies must be filled urgently

4. There should be mandatory and proactive disclosure of information, thereby reducing the RTI burden and removing excuses for secrecy

5. We must have stronger protection for RTI users, and The Whistleblowers Protection Act, 2014, must be implemented

The RTI is not just a procedural tool or a bureaucratic mechanism. It embodies the idea of citizenship itself, and the idea that the State belongs to the people, not the other way around. If we believe that citizens have the right to govern those who govern them, then the struggle to defend the RTI, as with the struggle to create it, must continue with courage, vigilance and collective action.

Ajit Ranade is a noted economist. More of his writing may be found here

Article courtesy: The Billion Press