• Adv. Rajiv Sharma

When Narendra Modi mentioned in his election affidavit in 2014 that he had passed BA from Delhi University and MA in Entire Political Science from Gujarat University, many people had reasons to believe that he was lying. An RTI activist, Neeraj Sharma, filed an application in Delhi University under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, to find out the truth. When on December 21, 2016, the Central Information Commission (CIC), New Delhi, allowed the inspection of the university records, panic gripped the PM Camp and the BJP.

An appeal was filed in Delhi High Court immediately against the order of the CIC, which was stayed on the very first hearing. On August 25, 2025, Justice Sachin Dutta held that PM Modi had the right to keep his degree private, and people had no right to see it and quashed the order of the CIC. The court did not comment on the incontrovertible argument that the PM had mentioned his BA degree in his election affidavit, which is a public document and the people have a right to know whether their Prime Minister had lied on oath in his affidavit or not.

The bold and path-breaking RTI Act was enacted by the Congress government in 2005, which allowed a common man to promote transparency in governance, curb corruption and incompetence, and seek accountability and answers from the government. In the case of normal laws, the government is the executor, and the people act. But the revolutionary RTI Act reverses the roles. It provides that a common man becomes the executor and the government acts. Hence, the Act allows a common citizen to participate in the process of governance, which is the hallmark of a vibrant democracy.

Till recently, the RTI Act was quite effective in making the citizens well informed and aware. The RTI queries in 2016 revealed that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was totally opposed to Notebandi, which was thoughtlessly implemented by the Modi Government. Similarly, it was also revealed that the RBI as well as the Election Commission had opined that the Electoral Bonds scheme would increase corruption and crimes like money laundering. The Modi government attacked these institutions to make them subservient to it and implemented the illegal scheme to fill the coffers of the BJP with black money.

The Act also exposed the mega scam of Vyapam in Madhya Pradesh in 2011. Two activists, Anand Rai and Ashish Chaturvedi, relentlessly kept seeking information about it. This led to the cancellation of degrees of more than 600 doctors and the arrest of thousands of scamsters, including BJP politicians.

The aforementioned sequence of events shows that PM Narendra Modi is fearful of certain provisions of the RTI Act, which empowers the people by providing them information about the wrongdoings and corrupt actions of the present government. Certainly, being the weakest and the most-timid Prime Minister of the country thus far, he does not have the courage to face the empowered citizens seeking answers and accountability from the Prime Minister and the government. The Prime Minister knows that an effective RTI Act would expose his government’s misgovernance, lies, and corruption. Hence, a multi-pronged conspiracy to emasculate the game-changing legislation was hatched, which is being implemented, slowly but systematically. The government is killing the RTI Act by directly threatening the RTI activists, by making amendments in laws and rules, by creating administrative hurdles and by enacting overlapping legislation in order to reduce its liability to disclose information, significantly.

Firstly, the BJP ecosystem has been attacking the RTI Activists who have got the guts to seek inconvenient information out of the government files. Many activists are branded as anti-nationals or urban naxals and implicated in false cases. The lives and the properties of the RTI activists have also come under threat. In the last 11 years, 75 RTI activists have been murdered. The RTI Act provided for independent Central and State Information Commissioners, who were being paid a fixed salary, and their tenure was also fixed at 5 years. But Modi government amended section 13 of the Act in July 2019. Now, the tenure, service conditions, salary, and allowances of the CICs are decided as per the sweet will of the executive. As a result, central and state commissioners have been effectively placed under the control of the executive. This has completely jeopardized the autonomy of the CICs.

The appointment of Information Commissioners, both at the national and state level, has been delayed for many months. At present, there are 11 sanctioned posts of the Central Information Commissioners, out of which 9 posts are vacant. This is causing huge backlog of the appeals and inordinate delays in their resolution.

In August 2023, the government passed the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act without any discussion in the Parliament. Through section 44(3) of this Act, section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act stands amended. Under section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, the personal information is exempt from disclosure in certain circumstances. But there was a proviso clause attached to it, which states that if larger public interest is involved, the disclosure of personal information may be permitted. Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act 2023 deletes this proviso clause of section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act. Hence, no personal information about any data pertaining to any individual, firm, or even the state can be disclosed now.

The above stated change in the RTI Act has given the government authorities the complete power to deny any information by terming it as personal information. For example, information on corruption in welfare schemes like MNREGA and government contracts and deals would be denied terming it as personal information. Last year, 18 newly built bridges at a cost of thousands of crores collapsed in Bihar. This should constitute a serious crime, and the contractors and supervising officers must be arrested and prosecuted. Ironically, if an RTI activist decides to seek the names of the contractors, who built these bridges and of the officers who inspected them and released payments, the same will be declined by terming it as personal information.

The DPDP Act 2023 will not only inflict a body blow to the RTI Act, but it also constitutes an attack on the press and media. If a journalist wants to investigate the role of the contractors or the supervising officers of the collapsed bridges, he cannot do so without taking the consent of the concerned contractor or the official involved in the construction. This is indeed a ridiculous provision. Now imagine, a journalist will first have to approach the corrupt contractor or officer and seek his consent to investigate his role in corruption and wrongdoings. Why would he give such consent? Any violation of the above said provision by anyone, including a journalist, will attract a draconian fine to the tune of Rs. 250 crores.

On March 2023, leader of opposition Shri Rahul Gandhi opposed the proposed Act and stated “This legislation under the pretext of safeguarding privacy, curtails access to public information, which is essential for citizens and journalists to hold the government accountable. The NDA government is attempting to shield itself from scrutiny, undermining transparency and weakening democratic oversight”. In April 2025, Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi led a group of 120 members of Parliament to give a petition to the government to repeal section 44(3) of the DPDP Act.

Further, the government is killing the RTI Act by refusing to collect the data, which has the potential to reveal its corruption, wrongdoings, and incompetence. When there is no data, there can be no information. Even when the government collects the data, it refuses to share the same in case it is inconvenient. For example, the government has not come up with any reliable data of total deaths due to covid, while credible international organisations state that at least 47 lakh people died in India during the pandemic. Similarly, the government refuses to share the number of deaths, which occurred because it failed to provide oxygen to the Covid patients in the hospitals or the number of migrant labourers who died, when they were forced to travel to their native places on foot. The case of PM CARES fund is also equally curious. Thousands of crores of rupees were deposited in this fund by the private parties, but the government refused to share the data as to who paid the mind-boggling amount of money and how and where this money was spent. All RTI pleas in this regard were turned down.

The RTI Act is an anathema to the corrupt, immoral and vote chor BJP government, led by a weak and timid Prime Minister, for the reasons that the act empowers the common man to hold the government accountable and to ensure transparency and good governance. Hence, the Modi government is deliberately weakening the RTI Act in various ways to ensure that its sins are not unveiled in the open. The people of India need to be aware of this and mobilize themselves to save the RTI Act enacted in the year 2005.

The author is General Secretary and Chief Spokesperson, Chandigarh Congress