Withdraw proposed amendment to RTI Act, ex-bureaucrats urge Centre

A group of 95 retired civil servants and diplomats on Wednesday urged the Union government to roll back a provision of the proposed Digital Personal Data Protection Act that amends the Right to Information Act to disallow the disclosure of personal information about public officials.

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister for Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Constitutional Conduct Group said that the amendment would render the Right to Information Act “largely ineffective”.

The Centre is seeking to amend Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act through Section 44(3) of the 2023 Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which imposes a blanket ban on the disclosure of personal information. It has not defined what constitutes “personal information”.

Section 8(1)(j) states: “Information which relates to personal information and the disclosure of which has not relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information”.

Critics have called the proposed change a serious threat to the principles of transparency and accountability...

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