In a strongly worded open letter, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court and ex-Chairman of the Law Commission of India, Justice Ajit Prakash Shah, has called upon Attorney General R. Venkataramani to urgently recommend a rollback of recent amendments to the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. The amendments, introduced through the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, have sparked serious constitutional concerns, Shah warned.
Justice Shah argued that the changes “represent a seismic shift” in India’s transparency framework, threatening to dismantle the RTI Act’s core purpose of “democratic accountability and citizen empowerment.” He emphasized that the amendments undermine the delicate balance between the public’s right to know and an individual’s right to privacy — a balance previously affirmed by the Indian judiciary.
“The recent amendments, however, destroy this delicate equilibrium,” Shah wrote in the letter dated 28 July, highlighting how key provisions of the RTI Act — particularly Section 8(1)(j) — have been weakened or deleted entirely.
According to Shah, the DPDP Act amends Section 8(1)(j): The new provisions replace the narrowly tailored exemption with a broader clause, removing the “public interest” override and allowing authorities to deny information by broadly classifying it as “personal.”
It deletes Section 8(1), which ensured that information not deniable to Parliament or State Legislatures could not be denied to the public. Its removal, Shah argues, fosters a dangerous information asymmetry between elected representatives and citizens.
By expansively defining ‘personal data’ and omitting the public interest override, the amendments enable public bodies to withhold information about government functions, decision-making, and budgeting.
Shah, a co-author of the 2012 Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy, reiterated that privacy legislation should not curtail transparency. He cited the report’s recommendation that “any information available in the public domain or furnished under the RTI Act should not be regarded as sensitive personal data.”
“These amendments are manifestly ill-thought-out,” Shah concluded, calling them ripe for constitutional challenge and urging the Attorney General to provide legal clarity on the matter. The open letter comes amid growing criticism from civil society and transparency advocates, who fear that the DPDP Act could roll back the hard-won gains in India’s right-to-information movement.
