Right to Information Act, 2005

The Right to Information Act, 2005 (Act No. 22 of 2005) received presidential assent on 15 June 2005 and came fully into force on 12 October 2005, replacing the weaker Freedom of Information Act, 2002, which was never operationalised. It gives statutory content to the fundamental right to information that the Supreme Court had already read into Article 19(1)(a) — the freedom of speech and expression — in State of U.P. v. Raj Narain (1975) and S.P. Gupta v. Union of India (1981), where Justice Mathew and Justice Bhagwati respectively held that the citizen's right to know flows from a republican, accountable government. The Act's preamble locates its purpose in "an informed citizenry" and "containment of corruption," and it overrides the Official Secrets Act, 1923 to the extent of inconsistency by virtue of Section 22.

Under the Act, every "public authority" (defined in Section 2(h)) must appoint Public Information Officers (PIOs) and proactively disclose seventeen categories of information under Section 4(1)(b). A citizen files a request under Section 6 with a nominal fee; the PIO must respond within 30 days, or 48 hours where life or liberty is involved (Section 7). Section 8 enumerates exemptions — national security, cabinet papers, commercial confidence, information held in a fiduciary capacity — but each is subject to a public-interest override and, under Section 8(2), exemptions may be overridden where public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm. A first appeal lies to a senior officer; a second appeal lies to the Central Information Commission (CIC) or a State Information Commission (SIC), constituted under Sections 12 and 15, which can impose penalties up to ₹25,000 on a defaulting PIO under Section 20. The Second Schedule lists intelligence and security organisations (such as the IB, RAW and BSF) exempted under Section 24, save for allegations of corruption or human-rights violations.

The Act has driven landmark transparency outcomes — exposure of the MGNREGA muster-roll frauds, the Adarsh Housing Society case, and disclosures by the Association for Democratic Reforms on candidate affidavits. The contentious Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019 empowered the Union government to fix the tenure, salaries and service conditions of the CIC and Information Commissioners by rules, which critics argued eroded their statutory independence vis-à-vis the original fixed five-year term. In CPIO, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal (2019), a Constitution Bench held that the office of the Chief Justice of India is a public authority under the Act, subject to the fiduciary and privacy tests of Section 8(1). The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 amended Section 8(1)(j), broadening the personal-information exemption — a change that remains a live debate in 2026.

For UPSC, the Act is core to GS-II (Governance) on transparency and accountability mechanisms and to GS-IV (Ethics) where it embodies probity, citizen empowerment and the foundational values of public service. Examiners frequently test the Section 8 exemptions, the public-interest override, the architecture of Information Commissions, and the implications of the 2019 amendment and the Subhash Chandra Agarwal judgment. Candidates should be able to relate RTI to the broader accountability ecosystem — social audits, citizens' charters and the Lokpal — and to critically evaluate dilution of its safeguards.