Once hailed as India’s most radical democratic tool, is the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, being slowly dismantled by delay, denial and disuse?
Ashok Kumar is an unhurried man. His checked white shirt and denim pants are in stark contrast with the bright coloured animal figurines on the walls of the Basti Vikas Kendra (community welfare centre), which doubles up as a child care facility, in South Delhi’s Begumpur locality.
It is a hot afternoon and the centre is slowly beginning to fill with people, mostly women, who have come for the weekly meeting. Today’s topic of discussion is the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
“Jahan samasya hain, wahan shikayat hain aur jahan shikayat hain, wahan soochna ka adhikar hain [Where there is a problem, there is a complaint, and where there is a complaint, there is RTI],” says Kumar to the gathering before handing out a pamphlet on how to file an RTI application. This is followed by a ‘trivia quiz’ on the law itself.
Kumar is a community manager with the citizens group Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS), which works primarily in the slums of Delhi to create awareness about the RTI Act and enable public participation in governance. “For the poor, RTI has become a weapon to fight corruption and red-tape at community levels,” says the 43-year-old, joining his colleague Suman Devi in taking up RTI applications from the women at the meeting.
October 12 marks 20 years since the RTI Act, 2005, came into force. The Act empowers citizens to seek information from public authorities and make governments more transparent and accountable.
The list of its success stories is long — from unearthing high-profile corruption (for example, the Adarsh housing scam in 2010) to exposing gaps in implementation of the rural jobs programme and seeking transparency in the electoral bonds scheme. The Act has also been useful to obtain information related to civic issues, including pollution levels, environmental violations, and road safety, among others.
But equally significant is the story of the Act’s fight for survival. Users say that frequent denial of information, pendency in appeals, and vacant posts at Information Commissions have affected the law’s implementation. Legislative amendments granting the Centre control over the functioning of Information Commissioners and the proposed changes that allow withholding of ‘personal information’ even in cases of public interest, could further curb the RTI’s goal of promoting transparency.
Best transparency law
The narrow and congested alley of Delhi’s Savitri Nagar locality makes it difficult to spot the office of Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convenor of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) and founding member of SNS. Tucked on the first floor of a building, the two-room space is filled with posters of NCPRI’s old meetings that played a key role in drafting the legislation.
Often regarded as one of the best transparency laws in the world, the RTI Act, 2005, was passed after years of public campaigning. And it has since been used by lakhs of people to expose gaps in government functioning. “It is one of the most empowering legislations and has helped people engage in a very meaningful way with governance,” says Bhardwaj, dressed in her trademark cotton sari, as she settles in a chair across a round wooden table.
“Studies have shown that in nearly 50% cases, people get the information sought when they file an RTI plea. It has really helped in asking for information on basic rights like ration, pension, water and sanitation.”Anjali BhardwajCo-convenor, National Campaign for People’s Right to Information
Nearly 60 lakh RTI applications are filed each year — globally, among the highest numbers under transparency laws, according to Bhardwaj. “Studies have shown that in nearly 50% cases, people get the information sought when they file an RTI plea,” she says. “It has really helped in asking for information on basic rights like ration, pension, water and sanitation.”
New Delhi-based advocate Tanmay Singh had his first brush with the RTI Act when he interned as a law student at the Madhya Pradesh State Information Commission in Bhopal. “When people interact with the government in daily life, they do not realise the extent to which they could possibly get information about their concerns. From that point of view, RTI literacy is very important,” says the 35-year-old, who was earlier associated with the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a digital rights advocacy organisation. Singh is an active RTI user, and while at IFF, he helped track data on Internet shutdowns across different States by filing RTI applications.
“When people interact with the government in daily life, they do not realise the extent to which they could possibly get information about their concerns. From that point of view, RTI literacy is very important.”Tanmay SinghAdvocate, New Delhi
Over time, there has been a “clear realisation” of the power of the RTI Act, says Bhardwaj, and therefore, there is also pushback in the form of legislative changes to the Act and information denials. Not just that, there are reports of more than 300 instances of harassment and attacks on citizens linked to information sought under the RTI Act. Data from a tracker run by the non-profit Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) says that 108 RTI users have been killed so far.
“This highlights a dire need for the protection of whistleblowers. The WhistleBlowers Protection Act was passed in 2014 but the law has not been implemented and this has been a significant challenge,” says Bhardwaj, calling the delay a ‘policy failure’.
Justice vs. blackmail
Transparency campaigner Lokesh Batra, who relentlessly secured information on the now-scrapped electoral bonds scheme, says “what you do with the information” matters more than just getting it. “This is where the media and NGOs such as the Association for Democratic Reforms [ADR] that went to court [against the bonds scheme] play a key role. I am just a one-man soldier,” he says.
Batra, 78, has been using the RTI Act since it came into force and some of his initial applications were on the infamous Nithari killings of 2005. “Sometimes you succeed [in getting information] and sometimes you don’t, but you never let go. Even now, I file appeals with the Central Information Commission [CIC], the nodal body, fully knowing that I may not live to see them through,” says the retired Commodore.
The information Batra obtained on the electoral bonds scheme was critical to ADR’s plea in the Supreme Court, eventually leading to striking down of the funding mode termed “unconstitutional” by the top court.
Another legal plea by RTI veteran Subhash Chandra Agrawal successfully brought the office of the Chief Justice of India under the law’s ambit. Agrawal, who holds a Guinness World Record for most letters to the editor published in newspapers, was a prolific user of the Act, especially in the first decade of the law’s implementation. In those early years, one could often find him at the CIC in New Delhi for his appeal hearings. His work has helped spotlight information on public spending, government functioning, and judicial appointments.
“The RTI Act has done wonders and there is no doubt about it,” says 75-year-old Agarwal, who now works as an RTI consultant to ministries and other public authorities. He continues to file RTI pleas, albeit less frequently, on issues of public good. But he has also observed the “misuse of RTI by applicants” and calls it one of the biggest challenges faced by the Act. He has come across several pleas, he says, filed with an intention to blackmail or for self-publicity.
Venkatesh Nayak, director of CHRI, says that “the odd case of the individual filing hundreds or even thousands of RTI applications in a short span of time” is used to label all RTI users. “Citizens and journalists seeking accountability for corruption in the government are often dubbed ‘blackmailers’,” he adds.
Behind the scenes
As of June 30 this year, more than 4 lakh appeals and complaints filed before 29 Information Commissions (both CIC and State Information Commissions) are pending, according to an assessment by SNS. Six information commissions have been non-functional for varying lengths of time in the last 14 months and two commissions are completely defunct as of October 7.
Three commissions, including the CIC, are functioning without a head, and all posts of information commissioners are vacant in two state commissions, as of October 7, 2025.
However, India’s former chief information commissioner Satyanand Mishra says that there is a “disproportionate emphasis” on the role of the information commissions. “The actual work takes place at a much lower level — that of the public information officer’s [PIO] who replies to the petitions. Unless we get a statistical overview of how many such applications were filed and in how many cases satisfactory information was shared within the promised period of 30 days, it is difficult to really get a picture of the health of the RTI Act,” he adds.
Drawing from experience, Mishra talks about how PIOs often feel ‘reluctant’ to carry out this work because providing information under RTI is over and above the other duties they must discharge in their official capacities. There is no incentive or allowance for handling RTI applications. Instead, there is the ‘threat’ of penalty up to ₹25,000 in cases of giving incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information or not giving information within the specified time.
Amending the Act
According to Nayak of CHRI, public authorities continue to resist the idea of transparency and favour information disclosure only on a ‘need to know’ basis. “The struggle to make every citizen matter in the decision-making process has not yielded positive results even after two decades of implementation of the RTI Act,” he says.
The very first attempt to amend the RTI Act was made in less than a year of the law’s enactment. In 2006, a Cabinet-level proposal to exclude file notings (written comments, opinions or recommendations recorded on a government file by officials during the decision-making process) from the law’s purview was ultimately shelved due to civil society’s opposition.
However, two amendments were passed over the last five years, both with wide-ranging ramifications for the Act, say experts. In 2019, Parliament amended the law to give the Union government the power to set salaries and service conditions of Information Commissioners who head the RTI appeal bodies at both the Central and State levels. Critics say that this amendment compromises the operational autonomy of information commissions, which are statutory bodies created under the law.
And in 2023, Parliament passed the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act through which an amendment was brought to the RTI Act. The amendment allows PIOs to withhold sharing personal information without any exception, including the larger public interest. The DPDP Act is yet to be fully enforced.
This issue has gained political steam. While the Congress Party-led opposition has demanded that this amendment be rolled back, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central government has defended the move by saying that there is a need for “harmonious provisions between the right to information and the right to privacy”.
Future lies with the young
Over the years, the RTI Act has given rise to a distinct group of transparency activists and campaigners who continue to file applications on issues of public good and create awareness around the law.
Activist Pankti Jog is the executive secretary of the Ahmedabad-based Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel. The organisation has been running an RTI phone helpline (also available on WhatsApp) since 2006. It has received an estimated seven lakh calls till now, mostly asking for help with filing applications or second appeals, says Jog, 50.
In 2008, the organisation also launched a unique ‘RTI on Wheels’ initiative, wherein a van with pamphlets travels to various States to create awareness. They also run a Saturday legal clinic in Ahmedabad, which sees a high number of walk-ins for filing RTI applications on urban civic issues.
“People in various housing societies in Ahmedabad face problems with basic issues such as poor approach roads, water supply, or garbage disposal. When nothing happens after complaining to local authorities, they file RTIs,” says Jog. With her organisation’s help, residents of a locality in Ahmedabad managed to get information on poor drinking water supply in their neighbourhood following which the authorities intervened to resolve the issue.
Hundreds of kilometres away in Hyderabad, Kareem Ansari works as a project manager for a platform called YouRTI, run by Hyderabad-based not-for-profit Yugantar. The portal allows users to file RTI pleas for free and anonymously, if needed. At last count, more than 13,600 RTIs have been filed on the portal, with most in Ansari’s name to protect the real petitioners’ identity.
“We weed out pleas that impinge on personal reputations. Our only goal is to help people seek accountability,” says Ansari, 41. Most of his recent activity on social media platforms Instagram and X is around dissemination of information received through RTI applications. “RTI’s future lies in the hands of young people. They should use the law in the right way and with the right spirit,” he adds.
Young people want to be more involved in governance, including at the state level, according to Vibodh Parthasarathi, associate professor at Centre for Culture, Media and Governance at Jamia Millia Islamia. “There is enthusiasm and a degree of responsibility about participation in the governance process, more than earlier,” he says.
In Bengaluru, Vinay Kumar, founder of the ‘Reclaim Constitution’ project, holds sessions with college students on the relevance of Constitutional values. Apart from encouraging them to get voter ID cards, Kumar also talks to the youngsters about using the RTI Act. “We guide them on how to file RTI applications and ask them to be specific in their queries,” says the 40-year-old.
Meanwhile, back in Begumpur, Delhi, Ashok Kumar is wrapping up his RTI awareness session and making a list of petitions to follow up on. When asked what he thinks about the future of the Act, Kumar says that most people are disillusioned with the law but the poor do not have that privilege. “We have seen the law since it came into force. Yes, it has weakened over the years but the only way to strengthen it is to make sure that the average citizen continues using it,” says Kumar, who has filed more than 5,000 RTI applications over the years.