New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said that deletion of the proviso in the RTI Act that recognises citizens’ right to information as being at par with that of legislators is “completely unwarranted”, and urged IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to pause, review, and repeal the amendment made to the original legislation of 2005.
Ramesh’s assertion came days after Vaishnaw responded to the Congress leader’s earlier letter in which he had expressed concern over Section 44 (3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 which “prohibits” sharing personal information under the Right to Information Act 2005.
Vaishnaw had responded to Ramesh, saying that personal details that are subject to public disclosure under various laws will continue to be disclosed under the RTI Act after the implementation of the new data protection rule.
“Many thanks for your response dated April 10, 2025, to my letter of March 23, 2025, regarding the far-reaching amendment made to the RTI Act, 2005 through Section 44 (3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023.
“I now wish to make four points by way of a counter-response to your defence of the RTI-destroying amendment,” Ramesh said in his letter to Vaishnaw on Sunday.
“First, Section 3 of the DPDP Act, 2023, cited in your letter as protecting disclosures under the RTI Act 2005, is wholly irrelevant since Section 8(1) of the RTI Act, 2005 itself has been amended drastically.
“Section 3 of the DPDP Act will now only protect disclosures as per the amended RTI Act, which exempts all personal information from being accessible,” the Congress general secretary said.
The operation of the RTI Act, 2005 -- informed by several judgments by the Supreme Court and various High Courts -- has demonstrated that the law is able to withhold the disclosure of personal information that has no relationship to any public activity or public interest, Ramesh said in his communication to Vaishnaw.
The deletion of the proviso in Section 8(1) of the RTI Act which recognises the citizens’ right to information as being at par with that of legislators is “completely unwarranted”, he contended.
“In fact, that proviso is applicable not just to the personal information exemption, but all exemptions in section 8(1) of the RTI Act, 2005.