NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Centre and sought its response on a petition filed by RTI activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri challenging amendments made to the RTI Act through the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act.
A Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Bagchi issued the notice while hearing the plea and asked the Centre to file its reply on the matter.
The petition contended that the amendments to the RTI Act go beyond the legislative scope of the DPDP Act and should therefore be struck down.
“The DPDP Act is limited to governing the processing of personal data held only in digital form and therefore any amendments to the RTI Act flowing from the DPDP Act should have been restricted to that scope. However the amendments to the RTI Act will impact people’s right to access information held in even non-digital forms, for instance personal information held in handwritten records, physical archives, display boards, physical records maintained by public authorities prior to adoption of digital means etc,” the plea stated.
The petition also argued that the DPDP Act could have a chilling effect on the public’s ability to use information for seeking accountability, conducting public monitoring and social audits of welfare programmes, and exposing corruption.
“The deletion of the proviso placed below section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, which states that information which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person, is also legally untenable as the legislative intent was for the proviso to be applicable to the entirety of Section 8(1) as evidenced through its language, placements and government’s own guidelines. Therefore it could not have been deleted through an amendment to Section 8(1)(j),” the plea further stated.
The petitioners were represented by senior counsel C U Singh and advocate Cheryl D’Souza, while the petition was filed through advocate Prashant Bhushan.