For decades the working assumption of Indian administration was that official information belonged to the government and that secrecy was the norm, disclosure the rare exception. The Right to Information Act, 2005 inverted that assumption. It declared that information held by public authorities belongs to the citizen, that secrecy is the exception, and that an official who refuses lawful disclosure must justify the refusal rather than the applicant justify the request. This chapter introduces the Act - why it was enacted, the object it pursues, the constitutional soil it grew from, and the scheme through which it operates. Mastering this foundation is essential because every later question on definitions, exemptions and appeals is ultimately answered by reference to the Act's overriding purpose: to build an informed citizenry and to contain corruption.
Historical backdrop: from official secrecy to open government
The legal culture inherited at Independence treated government information as presumptively confidential. The colonial Official Secrets Act, 1923 criminalised the communication of official information, and the executive routinely invoked privilege under the Evidence Act to resist disclosure in litigation. Against this backdrop the demand for transparency grew from two streams: a grassroots movement for accountability, most famously the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan campaign in Rajasthan during the 1990s that linked access to muster rolls and bills with the right of villagers to detect corruption in public works, and a constitutional jurisprudence developed by the Supreme Court that read a right to know into the freedom of speech and expression.
Several States legislated first - Tamil Nadu, Goa, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Maharashtra among them - and at the central level the Freedom of Information Act, 2002 was enacted but never brought into force. That statute was found too weak: it carried wide exemptions, no independent appellate commission and no penalty regime. Parliament repealed and replaced it with a far stronger instrument, the Right to Information Act, 2005, which created an enforceable right backed by independent Information Commissions and a penalty mechanism. Understanding this lineage explains why the 2005 Act is drafted as a citizen-empowering, secrecy-displacing statute rather than a mere administrative convenience.
The institutional contribution of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information and the recommendations of bodies such as the National Advisory Council fed directly into the design of the 2005 Act, ensuring that it carried teeth its predecessor lacked. The deliberate choice to vest the appellate function in independent Information Commissions, rather than in departmental superiors alone, and to make the burden of justifying refusal rest on the public information officer under Section 19(5), reflects a legislative judgment that transparency cannot be self-policed by the very bureaucracy it constrains. This historical insistence on independent enforcement is the structural reason the Act has proved more durable and effective than the secrecy-laden regime it displaced.
Constitutional foundation: the right to know under Article 19(1)(a)
The Right to Information Act did not create the right to information from nothing; it gave statutory machinery to a right the Supreme Court had already located in the Constitution. The foundational decision is State of U.P. v. Raj Narain (AIR 1975 SC 865), arising from an election dispute in which the State claimed privilege over the Blue Book detailing the Prime Minister's security arrangements. Justice K.K. Mathew held that in a government of responsibility like ours, where all agents of the public must be responsible for their conduct, there can be but few secrets, and that the people have a right to know every public act done in a public way by their public functionaries. The right to know was thus traced to the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19(1)(a).
This thread was strengthened in S.P. Gupta v. Union of India (AIR 1982 SC 149), the First Judges case, where Justice Bhagwati observed that the concept of an open government is the direct emanation from the right to know implicit in the right of free speech, and that disclosure of information regarding the functioning of government must be the rule and secrecy the exception. The electoral dimension was settled in People's Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India (2003) 4 SCC 399, which held that voters have a fundamental right to know the antecedents - including criminal records, assets and liabilities - of candidates seeking their vote, because the right to vote is rendered meaningless without informed choice. By 2005, then, the right to information was constitutionally entrenched; the Act merely supplied the practical regime to enforce it. The interplay between this constitutional right and the statutory right is developed further in our note on the right to information.
The long title and preamble: reading the object on the face of the Act
The object of the Act is not left to inference; it is written into the long title and preamble. The long title describes it as an Act to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens to secure access to information under the control of public authorities, in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority, the constitution of a Central Information Commission and State Information Commissions and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. Three ideas stand out: the right belongs to citizens, the duty rests on public authorities, and the goal is transparency and accountability.
The preamble is the interpretive heart of the statute. It recites that the Constitution of India has established a democratic Republic; that democracy requires an informed citizenry and transparency of information which are vital to its functioning and also to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed. It then candidly acknowledges a tension: that revelation of information in actual practice is likely to conflict with other public interests including efficient operations of the Governments, optimum use of limited fiscal resources and the preservation of confidentiality of sensitive information; and that it is necessary to harmonise these conflicting interests while preserving the paramountcy of the democratic ideal. This last clause is doctrinally crucial - the Act itself anticipates the exemptions in Section 8 and instructs the reader that disclosure and confidentiality must be balanced, with democracy as the paramount value.
Section 1: short title, extent and commencement
Section 1 names the statute the Right to Information Act, 2005 and extends it to the whole of India. At enactment it excepted the State of Jammu and Kashmir, which had its own J&K Right to Information Act; following the reorganisation of 2019 the central Act now applies to the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as well. The Act received the assent of the President on 15 June 2005.
The commencement is staggered. Section 1(3) provides that the provisions of sub-sections (1) and (2) of Section 4 (suo motu disclosure), sub-sections (1) and (2) of Section 5 (designation of officers), Sections 12, 13 and 15, 16, 24, 27 and 28 came into force at once on enactment, so that the institutional machinery - the Commissions and the designation of officers - could be set up immediately. The remaining provisions, including the operative right to make a request and obtain information, came into force on the expiry of one hundred and twenty days from enactment, that is on 12 October 2005. This phased design gave public authorities a window to appoint Public Information Officers and to begin proactive disclosure before the public's request-based right became operative.
The scheme of the Act: a bird's-eye map of the chapters
The Act is compact - thirty-one sections across six chapters with two schedules - but tightly engineered. Chapter I (Sections 1 to 2) contains the short title and the definitions, including the load-bearing terms information, record, right to information, public authority and third party that are analysed in our note on definitions, public authority, information and the PIO. Chapter II (Sections 3 to 11) is the operative core: Section 3 confers the right on all citizens, Section 4 imposes proactive disclosure obligations on public authorities, Section 5 requires designation of Public Information Officers, Section 6 governs the form of request, Section 7 fixes the time limits and fees for disposal, Section 8 lists the exemptions from disclosure, Section 9 permits rejection where disclosure would infringe copyright, Section 10 enacts the doctrine of severability, and Section 11 prescribes the third-party procedure.
Chapter III (Sections 12 to 14) constitutes the Central Information Commission; Chapter IV (Sections 15 to 17) the State Information Commissions; Chapter V (Sections 18 to 20) confers the Commissions' powers, the appeal mechanism and the penalty regime; and Chapter VI (Sections 21 to 31) contains the miscellaneous provisions including protection for action in good faith (Section 21), the overriding effect (Section 22), the bar on jurisdiction of courts (Section 23), the exclusion of certain intelligence and security organisations (Section 24), and the rule-making powers. The logic of the scheme is a movement from right, to duty, to machinery, to enforcement.
Section 3 and Section 6: the citizen's right and how it is exercised
Section 3 is deceptively short: subject to the provisions of this Act, all citizens shall have the right to information. Two limits are built in. First, the right vests in citizens, not in corporations, associations or foreign nationals as such - though a citizen may apply in any capacity. Second, the right is subject to the provisions of this Act, which imports the exemptions of Section 8 and the exclusions of Section 24. The right is therefore real but not absolute.
The mechanics of exercising the right are deliberately undemanding. Under Section 6, a person who desires to obtain information makes a request in writing or through electronic means, in English or Hindi or the official language of the area, to the Public Information Officer, accompanying it with the prescribed fee. Critically, Section 6(2) provides that an applicant making a request shall not be required to give any reason for requesting the information or any personal details except those necessary for contacting him. This no-reasons rule is a defining feature: because the right flows from citizenship and not from any particular interest, the applicant need not prove standing or motive. The detailed procedure is developed in our notes on the request for obtaining information and the disposal of request.
Section 4: proactive disclosure and the shift from pull to push
If Section 3 creates a right to pull information on request, Section 4 obliges public authorities to push information into the public domain on their own motion. Section 4(1)(b) requires every public authority to publish, within one hundred and twenty days of enactment, seventeen categories of information - its organisation and functions, the powers and duties of its officers, the norms it sets for discharging its functions, the rules and records it holds, the budget allocated, the manner of subsidy programmes, particulars of recipients of concessions, and so on. Section 4(2) enjoins authorities to provide as much information suo motu as possible so that the public has minimum resort to the use of this Act to obtain information.
The constitutional importance of Section 4 is that it embodies the proactive philosophy the Supreme Court endorsed in S.P. Gupta - disclosure as the rule. In Central Board of Secondary Education v. Aditya Bandopadhyay (2011) 8 SCC 497, Justice R.V. Raveendran emphasised that the preamble and the scheme show the Act is intended to provide an effective framework for effectuating the right to information, while cautioning that it must operate consistently with the preservation of confidentiality of sensitive information. The architecture of Section 4 is examined in detail in our note on the obligations of public authority.
The object in action: balancing transparency against competing interests
The preamble's promise to harmonise conflicting interests while preserving the paramountcy of the democratic ideal is not rhetorical; it is the lens through which courts read the Act. In CBSE v. Aditya Bandopadhyay (2011) 8 SCC 497, the Supreme Court held that an examinee has a right to inspect his evaluated answer-books because they constitute information held by a public authority and fall within no exemption, but it tempered this by warning that the Act should not be allowed to be misused or abused to become a tool to obstruct national development, and famously observed that the nation does not want a scenario where seventy-five per cent of the staff of public authorities spends seventy-five per cent of their time in collecting and furnishing information instead of discharging their normal duties. The case is a model of purposive yet balanced interpretation.
The financial-sector dimension was settled in Reserve Bank of India v. Jayantilal N. Mistry (2016) 3 SCC 525, where a series of appeals concerned disclosure of inspection reports and lists of defaulting borrowers. The Court held that the RBI does not stand in a fiduciary relationship with the banks it regulates, that it is a statutory authority bound to act in the larger public interest, and that it cannot withhold information by invoking the fiduciary exemption under Section 8(1)(e). The decision robustly reaffirmed that the object of the Act is transparency in the working of public authorities and that regulators cannot shield themselves behind claimed confidentiality where public interest favours disclosure. The Court memorably observed that the RBI ought to act with transparency and not hide information that might embarrass individual banks, holding that it is duty-bound to comply with the provisions of the RTI Act and to furnish the information sought.
The privacy limit on the object: personal information and Section 8(1)(j)
The object of transparency is bounded by the competing value of privacy, and the leading authority on this boundary is Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner (2013) 1 SCC 212. The applicant sought the service record, assets, gifts and disciplinary details of a government servant. The Supreme Court held that such matters relating to a public servant's career, his assets and liabilities, and the details of his service are personal information the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, and is therefore exempt under Section 8(1)(j) unless a larger public interest is shown. The applicant having demonstrated no bona fide public interest, the denial was upheld.
For the student of the Act's object, Girish Ramchandra Deshpande illustrates that the statute does not pursue transparency at any cost; the preamble's instruction to harmonise conflicting interests authorises the Section 8 exemptions, of which the personal-information exemption is the most frequently litigated. The decision has been criticised for reading the exemption too widely, but it remains the controlling precedent and is essential to any complete account of how the object is qualified in practice.
Section 22: the overriding effect and the displacement of secrecy laws
The Act's object would be hollow if older secrecy statutes could be invoked to defeat disclosure. Section 22 prevents this. It provides that the provisions of this Act shall have effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent therewith contained in the Official Secrets Act, 1923, and any other law for the time being in force or in any instrument having effect by virtue of any law other than this Act. This non-obstante clause gives the RTI Act primacy: where any prior law conflicts with the right to information, the Act prevails.
The most significant target of Section 22 is the Official Secrets Act, 1923, the colonial instrument that long served as the legal foundation of administrative secrecy. After 2005, a confidentiality claim resting on the Official Secrets Act cannot by itself defeat a valid request; the question instead becomes whether the information falls within a Section 8 exemption. Section 8(2) reinforces this by providing that, notwithstanding the Official Secrets Act or any exemption permissible under Section 8(1), a public authority may allow access to information if the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interests. Section 22 thus operationalises the preamble's declaration of the paramountcy of the democratic ideal by ensuring that the default of secrecy is statutorily reversed in favour of disclosure.
The reach of Section 22 extends well beyond the Official Secrets Act. Because the clause speaks of any other law for the time being in force and any instrument having effect by virtue of any law, internal manuals, departmental circulars, service rules and contractual confidentiality clauses cannot be invoked to deny information that the Act requires to be disclosed. Where such a rule purports to forbid disclosure but the information is not exempt under Section 8 or excluded under Section 24, the rule yields to the Act. This is why the overriding effect is often described as the keystone of the statute: it converts the Act from one transparency law among many into the controlling instrument whenever access to information held by a public authority is in issue.
Boundaries of the scheme: exclusions, good faith and finality
The scheme contains its own internal limits. Section 24 excludes certain intelligence and security organisations specified in the Second Schedule - such as the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing and other notified bodies - from the Act, with the important proviso that information pertaining to allegations of corruption and human rights violations is not excluded. This proviso ensures that even exempt agencies cannot use the exclusion to hide corruption, consistent with the preamble's anti-corruption purpose.
Section 21 protects officers from suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings for anything done in good faith under the Act, encouraging disclosure without fear of liability. Section 23 ousts the jurisdiction of civil courts to entertain suits in respect of any order made under the Act, channelling grievances through the statutory appeal and complaint route to the Information Commissions. Together these provisions show that the scheme is self-contained: rights, duties, exemptions, exclusions, immunities and remedies all live within the four corners of the Act. For a fuller treatment of how requests move through this machinery, see our notes on the request for obtaining information and the disposal of request, and return to the RTI Act notes hub for the full chapter map.
Exam takeaways: how to deploy this chapter in answers
For judiciary and CLAT-PG answers, anchor every proposition about the RTI Act to its object. Open with the constitutional lineage - Raj Narain, S.P. Gupta and PUCL establishing the right to know under Article 19(1)(a) - then show that the 2005 Act gave that right a practical regime. Quote the preamble's twin aims: an informed citizenry and the containment of corruption, harmonised against competing public interests with democracy paramount. This framing earns marks because it demonstrates that the candidate understands the Act as the codification of a pre-existing fundamental right.
On the scheme, be able to sketch the movement from right (Section 3), to duty (Sections 4 and 5), to machinery (Sections 12 to 17), to enforcement (Sections 18 to 20). Remember the no-reasons rule in Section 6(2), the staggered commencement under Section 1(3) culminating on 12 October 2005, and the overriding effect of Section 22 over the Official Secrets Act. When a question tests the limits of the right, marshal CBSE v. Aditya Bandopadhyay for purposive-but-balanced interpretation, RBI v. Jayantilal N. Mistry for the rejection of fiduciary excuses by regulators, and Girish Ramchandra Deshpande for the privacy exemption under Section 8(1)(j). A precise citation paired with a one-line holding distinguishes a first-class answer from a merely competent one.
Frequently asked questions
When did the Right to Information Act, 2005 come into force?
The Act received the President's assent on 15 June 2005. Its commencement was staggered under Section 1(3): the institutional provisions - parts of Sections 4 and 5 and Sections 12, 13, 15, 16, 24, 27 and 28 - took effect at once, while the operative right to request information came into force on the expiry of 120 days from enactment, that is on 12 October 2005.
What is the object of the RTI Act as stated in its preamble?
The preamble declares that democracy requires an informed citizenry and transparency of information, which are vital to its functioning and also to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed. It also acknowledges that disclosure must be harmonised with competing public interests such as efficient government and confidentiality of sensitive information, while preserving the paramountcy of the democratic ideal.
Is the right to information a fundamental right or only a statutory right?
Both. The Supreme Court located the right to know within Article 19(1)(a) in State of U.P. v. Raj Narain (AIR 1975 SC 865) and S.P. Gupta v. Union of India (AIR 1982 SC 149) long before 2005. The RTI Act did not create the right but supplied a practical, enforceable regime - the statutory right under Section 3 - to give effect to the underlying fundamental right.
Why must an applicant not give reasons for seeking information?
Section 6(2) expressly provides that an applicant shall not be required to give any reason for requesting information, nor any personal details except those needed to contact him. Because the right flows from citizenship under Section 3 rather than from any particular interest, the applicant need not prove standing or motive. This no-reasons rule is a defining structural feature of the Act.
How does Section 22 affect the Official Secrets Act, 1923?
Section 22 is a non-obstante clause giving the RTI Act effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent in the Official Secrets Act, 1923 or any other law. A confidentiality claim resting on the Official Secrets Act cannot by itself defeat a valid request; the real question becomes whether the information falls within a Section 8 exemption. Section 8(2) further allows disclosure even of such material where public interest outweighs the harm.
Does the RTI Act allow disclosure of a public servant's personal details?
Generally no, unless a larger public interest is shown. In Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner (2013) 1 SCC 212, the Supreme Court held that a public servant's service record, assets, liabilities and disciplinary details are personal information exempt under Section 8(1)(j), since their disclosure bears no relationship to any public activity or interest absent a demonstrated public-interest justification.