Economic Survey 2025-26 Targets RTI Act, Suggests Ministerial Veto To Deny Information
· Free Press Journal
After a decade of existence and showing the scars of legislative fetters on its working, the Right to Information (RTI) Act has attracted adverse attention in the Economic Survey 2025-26. The survey frowns on the law as posing a risk of “becoming an end in itself with disclosure celebrated regardless of its contribution to good governance.”
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The survey does acknowledge the wide perception of the law as “one of India’s most powerful democratic reforms” but makes a suggestion for a ministerial veto to deny information.
What remains of the RTI Act is a pale shadow of its original self. The bureaucracy was smarting at the prospect of forced disclosures when the law was enacted under the UPA, led by Manmohan Singh, who, ironically, later spoke of the need for a “fine balance” between the disclosure and the privacy of individuals.
Before 2014, the BJP’s RTI cell vowed to continue its campaigns even after the party came to power. It had already filed over 2,000 applications and used it to fuel its legal cases, such as the one alleging impropriety in the Commonwealth Games preparations of 2010. After the NDA came to power, its appetite for openness disappeared.
Although the Act exempts personal information under Section 8(1)(j), where it has no public interest or would cause unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of an individual, the government viewed it as a potent weapon in the hands of transparency activists. The law made access to information possible for any citizen, on a par with the information that could not be denied to Parliament and state legislatures.
That well-thought-out provision was buried through the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which amended the RTI, although the judgement that was used as the basis, the Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy order, did contain ways to preserve the right to information. That was done by including the test of public interest while safeguarding the privacy of personal data.
Misguided emphasis: The focus of the Economic Survey is on changes to the RTI Act that would narrow the scope of information requests and virtually cut the law’s feet to make it stand no taller than the less-empowering legislation abroad.
What seems to appeal most to the survey’s authors are exclusions that it cites in the US law, such as personnel rules, inter-agency memos, and financial regulation reports; in the UK, on policy formulation, where public interest may be harmed—with a ministerial veto available against court orders; and in South Africa, where policy deliberations are said to be excluded.
What is particularly disconcerting to the survey is the inclusion in the RTI Act of file notings, internal opinions, and draft memos, a level of openness that it thinks could inhibit officials from expressing “bold ideas”. This is counter-intuitive, since officials with bold ideas that have been carefully considered would like to place them before the public to force the much-needed change in decision-making processes.
There is also evident anxiety in the survey about access provisions. For one, it cites the Girish Ramchandra Deshpande judgement of 2013 to underscore judicial protection to keep personal records of a public servant secret, in spite of protection already contained for such information under Sec.8 (1) (j).
The survey wants “casual requests that add little value to public interest” on things such as service records, transfers, and confidential staff reports excluded. An alarming recommendation is a “narrowly defined ministerial veto, subject to parliamentary oversight, to guard against disclosures that could unduly constrain governance”.
The Supreme Court ruled on unfilled vacancies in various Information Commissions (IC) that create mountains of pending appeals. Last year, the court heard that there were 28,000 appeals yet to be taken up, and, in spite of giving an undertaking to fill the Central Information Commission vacancies in three months, the Union government went about it leisurely. Nationally, four lakh appeals were pending in October 2025.
In the dark: Failure to advance the RTI, so vital to improving governance, finds no mention in the survey. It could have expressed worry, for instance, that failure to implement proactive disclosure of official records under Section 4 has enfeebled the Act.
Even where public interest calls for the disclosure of taxpayer-funded schemes and contracts, government departments and agencies deny requests, citing exemption of third-party information. Few Information Officers get penalised.
At another level, the lack of protection for those who use the law has resulted in assaults, police cases, and even murder of applicants, besides intimidation. In Gujarat, for example, less than 45% of the RTI applications received a response since 2019, says the Mahiti Adhikar Manch, while the state’s Information Commission imposed a lifelong ban on ten people from seeking information four years ago because they “filed multiple queries”, were “cantankerous” or “were harassing government officials”. Seven State Information Commissions were defunct for various periods during 2023-24.
The survey could have deplored the hobbling of the RTI in multiple ways. Six years ago, the Union government introduced amendments empowering it to make rules on tenure, salaries and post-retirement benefits of the ICs, dangling a sword over their heads. Recently, even a dissent note from the Leader of the Opposition on the appointment of the Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners could not be accessed, and the Supreme Court saw no merit in a plea to direct its publication.
Just days ago, the apex court was told that Jharkhand, where the IC failed to work for years at a time, would appoint commissioners by February end. Maharashtra failed to add commissioner posts to dispose of pending appeals, prompting the court to order the addition of three. In Himachal Pradesh, the appointment process was restarted because “suitable candidates” did not apply. None of these concerns figure in the survey.
The writer is a senior journalist.