The effectiveness of the Right to Information (RTI) regime has, in recent years, come under a cloud of uncertainty with commentators pointing at a progressive weakening of RTI mechanisms. Among the concerns are onerous delays in appointments of information commissioners and other officials, rising backlogs and arbitrary rejections of requests by public authorities.
The amendment effected to Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act by the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 further exacerbated these concerns as it empowered public authorities to deny information if it qualified as ‘personal information’, without requiring it to be weighed against public interest. While the High Courts and the Supreme Court often find themselves adjudicating upon the failure of government ministries and departments to comply with the RTI Act, the courts themselves are guilty of not adhering to the principles of the Act.
The 2024-25 Annual Report of the Central Information Commission (CIC) reveals that among all public authorities in the country, the Delhi High Court has the highest rate of rejection of RTI applications followed by the Supreme Court. More often than not, courts withhold information that relates to institutional probity and conduct of judicial personnel -information that is crucial for affixing accountability. Hence, it is imperative to analyse these acts of omission and commission.
Firstly, courts have been thwarting RTI queries seeking clarity on judicial examinations, disciplinary conduct of judges and internal administrative affairs, by taking the cover of the exemptions laid out under Section 8 of the Act, even where the information demanded lies beyond the ambit of the exemptions. Particularly, Section 8(1)(j) is often invoked by High Courts, thus lending credence to the apprehensions being expressed over the DPDP amendment. This year, the Chhattisgarh High Court cited the provision to overrule a direction issued by the State Information Commission (SIC), refusing to disclose details of the complaints and inquiries against three judicial officers. In a similar case, the Delhi High Court in August last year had refused to disclose complaints details, again primarily invoking Section 8(1)(j).
Moreover, as pointed out in the Judicial Transparency Index (JTI) report recently published by the Justice, Access and Lowering Delays in India (JALDI) team at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, as many as 15 High Courts have included additional restrictions in their RTI Rules. The grounds against disclosure contained in most of these provisions usually exceed the scope of the RTI Act. Moreover, they are of a vague and arbitrary character as in the case of the Bombay High Court which exempts all “information which is not in the public domain.” While the Punjab and Haryana and Bombay High Courts bar disclosure of information “relating to the Court’s judicial functions and matters incidental thereto”, the High Courts of Gujarat and Gauhati bar information unrelated to such judicial functions. The Bombay High Court has in the recent past refused to disclose an order pertaining to the appearance of a litigant in person on the ground that it related to the Court’s judicial functioning, as a 2025 CIC order revealed.
Some High Courts have also included “confidentiality of examinations” as a broad exemption in their Rules without specifying any qualifications, even though such a clause is absent in the parent Act. The Allahabad High Court in April set aside a CIC order directing the disclosure of evaluated answer sheets of the judicial service examination, citing the need to uphold the confidentiality and ‘sanctity’ of examinations. It, however, relied on a provision in its RTI Rules that bars the disclosure of information if it is “against any practice prevailing in the material regard.”
The push towards digitisation under the e-Courts initiative has greatly expanded the potential for judicial transparency by making it possible to comprehensively furnish all information relating to the functioning of a court on its website. However, some High Courts still fail to mention crucial details on their websites necessary to file an RTI application. The Supreme Court in 2023 had taken note of the fact that many High Courts had not yet set up online portals for filing and processing of RTI applications. The JTI report reveals that five High Courts have not made available a functional link to their RTI portals on their websites even as of February 2026.
Furthermore, High Courts also need to publish the address or email ID of their public information officers (PIOs), who are the first authority entrusted with the task of receiving and processing RTI requests under the Act. High Courts, being public authorities, are also bound to disclose the names and designations of their PIOs along with those of their benches under Section 4(1)(b)(xvi) of the Act. Section 4 requires public authorities to proactively publish, among other things, specific information concerning their functioning including budgets, details of officials, rules and regulations and information on PIOs. However, the JTI report finds that only about 15 High Courts have published the names, designations and contact information of the PIOs updated to reflect the latest information. The rest have either omitted one or more details or published outdated information.
This can be seen as part of a larger problem by High Courts in failing to periodically publish proactive disclosures. In a lot of the cases, such disclosures are significantly outdated as in the case of the Jharkhand and Rajasthan High Courts. The 2024-25 CIC annual report has revealed that the majority of High Courts are also not taking part in the third party transparency audit of proactive disclosures recommended by the CIC. Of the few that did conduct such audits, four High Courts got Grade D or Grade E - the lowest grades.
It was the Supreme Court that had taken the first step towards recognising the right to information by reading it into the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a). And yet, courts today are contravening the RTI regime through selective readings of statutory exemptions, by failing to put in place functional RTI portals and by not adequately furnishing proactive disclosures. At a time when the RTI system is facing multiple challenges, the judiciary must set an example by staying true to the essence of the legislation and strive to nurture a rigorous culture of accountability instead of contributing to the institutional practices scuttling the functioning of the RTI Act.
Abhishek Rath is a Research Fellow at JALDI Initiative, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.