Supreme Court issues notice on plea challenging RTI amendment via DPDP Act

By A Representative

The Supreme Court of India on Monday issued notice on a petition filed by the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information challenging amendments to the Right to Information Act, 2005 brought in through the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. The matter was heard by a Bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi, which indicated that the case would be placed before a larger Bench.

The petition, filed under Article 32 of the Constitution, questions the constitutional validity of the substitution of Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act through Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act. Appearing for the campaign, advocates Prashant Bhushan and Rahul Gupta submitted that the amendment removes the statutory safeguards that previously required authorities to balance privacy with transparency.

According to the petition, Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act substitutes the earlier clause with a new provision that reads: “(j) information which relates to personal information;”. The petition notes that the original provision exempted “information which relates to personal information the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual, unless… the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information.”

The plea argues that this substitution has created what it terms a “blanket exemption” on disclosure of personal information by deleting the public activity test, the unwarranted invasion test, and the public interest override. In its synopsis, the campaign contends that the unamended Section 8(1)(j) “embodied a legislatively mandated proportionality mechanism,” and that the amended clause now leaves “an unqualified exemption, severed from any balancing standard.”

Citing the Constitution Bench judgment in CPIO, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal (2020) 5 SCC 481, the petition states that the earlier provision was upheld because it required the Information Officer to balance privacy harm against public interest in disclosure. It quotes paragraph 275 of the ruling, which held that “by requiring the Information Officer to balance the public interest in disclosure against the privacy harm caused, clause (j) creates a legislatively mandated measure of proportionality.”

The petition further submits that with the deletion of this balancing requirement, “the structural safeguard that the Constitution Bench relied upon… has been removed,” and argues that the amendment “imposes a blanket ban on Right to Know under Article 19(1)(a) … on the ground of privacy under Article 21.”

The DPDP Act received Presidential assent on August 11, 2023, but the amendment to the RTI Act came into effect on November 13, 2025, following the issuance of Gazette Notification G.S.R. 843(E), which operationalised Section 44(3).

The campaign has sought a declaration that the amendment to Section 8(1)(j) is unconstitutional for allegedly violating Articles 14, 19(1)(a) and 21, along with interim relief staying its operation. The matter is expected to be considered by a larger Bench.

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