The Right to Information Act gives any Indian citizen the right to ask a public authority for information and to get an answer within a fixed time. It covers central, state and local government bodies, and any organisation substantially financed by government. The mechanics are deliberately simple: a written or electronic application, a nominal fee, and a Public Information Officer who must respond in thirty days, or in forty eight hours where the request concerns a person’s life or liberty.
The teeth are in Section 20. If an officer refuses without reasonable cause, delays, gives false information or destroys records, the Information Commission can impose a penalty of two hundred and fifty rupees per day up to twenty five thousand rupees, and that penalty is paid by the officer personally rather than by the department. If the deadline is missed, the information must be supplied free.
If a request is refused or ignored, there is a first appeal to a senior officer within the same authority, then a second appeal to the Central or State Information Commission, whose orders are binding. Section 8 sets out the exemptions, but even exempt information can be released where the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm.
Two changes have narrowed the law. The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019 gave the central government power to fix the tenure and salaries of Information Commissioners, which critics say weakened their independence. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 amended Section 8(1)(j) to exempt personal information more broadly, removing the earlier public interest override.