From Right To Information To Right To Deny? How The DPDP Act Dilutes A Fundamental Freedom

The Right To Information (RTI) Act recognizes the citizen as the ruler of the Nation and hence makes giving information as the default mode and limits the denial of information in Section 8 (1).

It empowered citizens to expose corruption and was slowly converting our democracy into a participatory democracy, -the Swaraj which we deserve.

The law however, has the safeguard to deny certain information limited to ten exemptions in Section 8 (1). It safeguards privacy by restricting denial in Section 8 (1)(j) thus:

“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 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:

Provided that the information, which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person.”

It restricted denial to the limits specified in Article 19 (2) of the Constitution which limits

Article 19 (1)(a) to safeguard violation of ‘decency and morality’. This also meant that whoever claimed this exemption would have to state that he would deny this information to Parliament.

The government noted that in a majority of judgements of the Supreme Court only six words out of 87 words in section 8(1)(j)detailing exemptions are being considered: ‘information which relates to personal information’. Hence it conjured up the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act and amended Section 8(1)(j) by deleting 81 words.

It amended it to exempt ‘information which relates to personal information’. Further it defines ‘person’ under Section 2(s),in a very bizarre way. According to this definition, a ‘person’ includes not only individuals but also Hindu Undivided Families, companies, firms, associations of persons, State, and even artificial legal entities.

Almost every data or information relates to some person and thus can be denied. This transforms RTI into RDI-Right to Deny Information. The nation needs to become aware of this constraint on its fundamental right. There is a possibility that our fundamental rights in Article 19 may be slowly constrained, unless public opinion opposes this.

Most of our fundamental rights have been expanded consistently since 1950. The Right to Information is being curbed, and we seem to be indifferent.

(The author is Former Central Information Commissioner)