Supreme Court notice to Centre on plea of RTI activist challenging provisions of DPDP Act

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to Centre on a petition filed by RTI activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri challenging the amendments made to the transparency law through the Digital Personal Data Protection Act.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Bagchi sought a response from the Centre on the petition, contending that the amendments to the RTI Act are beyond the legislative scope of the DPDP Act and should be struck down.

The petitioners were led by senior advocate C U Singh and advocate Cheryl D’souza. The petition was filed through advocate Prashant Bhushan.

The plea said, "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 plea claimed, 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 hand written records, physical archives, display boards, physical records maintained by public authorities prior to adoption of digital means etc.

The petition also claimed the DPDP Act will have a chilling impact on people’s ability to use information for seeking accountability, carrying out public monitoring and social audits of welfare programmes and blowing the whistle on 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 contended.