Third Party Information (Section 11)

Section 11 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 is the Act's natural-justice safety valve. Before a Public Information Officer hands over a record that relates to or was supplied by a third party and treated by that third party as confidential, Section 11 compels the officer to stop, notify that third party, and hear what it has to say. It is one of the most misunderstood provisions in the statute: examinees treat it as a veto, public authorities use it to stall, and PIOs routinely confuse it with the substantive exemptions in Sections 8 and 9. This chapter unpacks the text, the mandatory timeline, and the body of Supreme Court and Commission case law that tells us exactly what Section 11 does and does not do.

The Text and Its Place in the Scheme

Section 11 falls in Chapter II of the Act, immediately after the disposal-of-request machinery in Section 7 and the exemptions in Sections 8 and 9. Its placement is deliberate. The provision is not a fresh ground for refusing information; it is a procedural overlay that the Public Information Officer (PIO) activates only when a request touches information connected to a person other than the applicant and the public authority. The drafters recognised that transparency cannot be a one-way street: a citizen's right to know may collide with another person's legitimate interest in confidentiality, and Section 11 is the structured mechanism for resolving that collision through a hearing rather than by an automatic bar.

Sub-section (1) sets the trigger: where a Central or State PIO intends to disclose any information or record “which relates to or has been supplied by a third party and has been treated as confidential by that third party,” the PIO must, within five days of receiving the request, give written notice to the third party of the request and of the fact that the PIO intends to disclose, and invite the third party to make a submission — in writing or orally — on whether the information should be disclosed. The submission “shall be kept in view while taking a decision about disclosure.” Two cumulative conditions are embedded here: the material must relate to or have been supplied by the third party, and it must have been treated as confidential by that party. Both must coexist; information supplied openly, or material the third party never marked or regarded as confidential, falls outside the trigger.

A crucial proviso qualifies the whole exercise: except in the case of trade or commercial secrets protected by law, disclosure may be allowed if the public interest in disclosure outweighs in importance any possible harm or injury to the interests of the third party. In other words, even confidential third-party material is disclosable on a public-interest balancing test, and that test is built into the section itself, not merely into Section 8(2). The architecture mirrors the dominant philosophy of the Act, set out in its long title and preamble and traced in Introduction: Object and Scheme — disclosure is the norm, secrecy the carefully reasoned exception, and the burden of justifying non-disclosure rests on the authority that asserts it.

Who Is a “Third Party”?

The phrase is defined in Section 2(n): a third party means a person other than the citizen making a request for information, and includes a public authority. The breadth of this definition matters. A rival bidder, an employee whose service record is sought, a company whose tax filings are requested, even another government department — each can be a third party. Because a public authority is expressly included, the recipient department in an inter-departmental disclosure can itself invoke Section 11 protection.

But not every mention of another person triggers the section. The information must (a) relate to or have been supplied by that third party, and (b) have been treated as confidential by that third party. Where information was never furnished in confidence — for instance, material already in the public domain, or records the third party itself filed knowing they were public — the Section 11 procedure is not attracted. The Central Information Commission has repeatedly cautioned PIOs against issuing third-party notices mechanically as a delaying device when no genuine claim of confidentiality exists. For the underlying definitional architecture, see Definitions: Public Authority, Information, PIO.

The inclusion of a public authority within the definition produces a recurring pattern in inter-departmental requests. Suppose a citizen asks Department A for a confidential report that Department B prepared and shared on the understanding that it would not be made public. Department B is a third party for the purposes of that request, and the PIO of Department A must run the Section 11 procedure before disclosing. This prevents one wing of government from unilaterally publishing another wing's sensitive material without the originating authority being heard. Equally, an individual whose personal file is sought, a contractor whose tender documents are requested, or a company whose regulatory filings are demanded all qualify — the breadth of Section 2(n) is intended to ensure that no affected interest is bypassed.

The Mandatory 5-10-40 Timeline

Section 11 builds a self-contained clock that sits on top of the ordinary thirty-day disposal window in Section 7(1). Three deadlines define it:

Five days — under Section 11(1), the PIO must issue the written notice to the third party within five days of receiving the request.

Ten days — under Section 11(2), the third party must be given the opportunity to make a representation against the proposed disclosure within ten days from the date of receipt of the notice.

Forty days — under Section 11(3), where notice has been given, the PIO must, within forty days after receipt of the request under Section 6, make a decision whether or not to disclose, and give written notice of that decision to the third party. The standard thirty-day limit in Section 7(1) is thus extended by ten days, and only ten days, to accommodate the third-party process. A PIO cannot use Section 11 to sit on a file indefinitely; forty days is the outer limit.

It is worth noting how the clock interacts with life-and-liberty requests. Where information concerns the life or liberty of a person, Section 7(1) compels disposal within forty-eight hours. The third-party machinery of Section 11, with its built-in fifteen-day notice-and-representation window, cannot realistically run inside forty-eight hours; in such urgent cases the overriding life-and-liberty timeline prevails, and the third-party process is necessarily compressed or, on the proviso's logic, yields to the paramount public interest. The detailed disposal mechanics, fees, and time limits are examined in Request for Obtaining Information.

The procedure is mandatory wherever its trigger is satisfied. Failure to issue notice vitiates a disclosure (the third party is denied a hearing) and equally exposes a wrongful refusal to penalty under Section 20. The Commissions have treated the timeline as directory in the sense that breach does not extinguish the applicant's right, but mandatory in the sense that the third party must always be heard before its confidential information changes hands.

The Third Party's Independent Right of Appeal

Section 11(4) gives teeth to the hearing. The decision-notice issued under Section 11(3) must contain a statement that the third party is entitled to prefer an appeal under Section 19 against the decision. This is significant: ordinarily it is the dissatisfied applicant who appeals, but Section 11(4) creates a parallel appellate right for the third party who objects to disclosure.

The practical effect is that information found disclosable does not change hands the moment the PIO decides. Read with Section 19, the third party has thirty days from the decision to file a first appeal; the information is withheld until that appellate window closes and any appeal is disposed of. This staggered mechanism prevents the irreversible harm that disclosure would cause if the objector's remedy were merely theoretical. The appellate and second-appeal machinery itself is examined under Sections 19 and 20.

The logic is one of reversibility. Once confidential information is handed over it cannot be recalled; the harm, if the disclosure was wrong, is permanent. By withholding the actual transfer until the third party's appeal window has run, Section 11(4) ensures that the objector's statutory remedy is real rather than illusory. This is also why Information Commissions, when allowing a second appeal in favour of disclosure of third-party material, frequently grant a short stay before the information is released, preserving the third party's ability to seek judicial review. The applicant's right to the information is vindicated, but only after the competing interest has had its full procedural day.

Section 11 Is Not a Veto

The single most important interpretive principle is that the third party's objection does not bind the PIO. Section 11(1) says the submission “shall be kept in view,” and the proviso permits disclosure in the public interest notwithstanding confidentiality. The third party gets a voice, not a veto.

The Central Information Commission has stated this repeatedly — a third party objection, even a vehement one, cannot by itself defeat an otherwise valid request; the PIO must independently assess whether any exemption in Section 8 or 9 actually applies and whether the public-interest override tilts the balance toward disclosure. The opposite reading would convert every commercial or personal record into a privately controlled secret, defeating the Act's transparency object. The objection feeds the PIO's reasoning; it does not replace it.

This principle has a practical corollary that exam answers often miss. Because the PIO retains the final say, a PIO who simply parrots the third party's objection without independent reasons commits an appealable error. The decision under Section 11(3) must be a speaking order: it must record what the third party said, what exemption (if any) is engaged, how the public-interest balance was struck, and why disclosure is granted or refused. A bare conclusion is liable to be set aside by the First Appellate Authority or the Information Commission, and may attract the deemed-refusal consequences and penalties that accompany a non-reasoned denial.

Relationship with Sections 8 and 9

A recurring error is to treat Section 11 as a standalone exemption. It is not. Sections 8 and 9 supply the grounds on which information may be withheld — fiduciary relationship (Section 8(1)(e)), commercial confidence and trade secrets (Section 8(1)(d)), unwarranted invasion of privacy (Section 8(1)(j)), and so on. Section 11 supplies only the procedure to be followed before disclosing material that engages a third party's interest. A PIO who writes "information denied under Section 11" has made a categorical error: Section 11 contains no power to deny anything. It either applies (in which case a notice issues and a hearing follows) or it does not; the substantive yes-or-no flows from Sections 8 and 9 alone.

The two interact closely. A privacy claim under Section 8(1)(j) typically arises in respect of a third party's personal information, so Section 11 notice will often be the vehicle through which that claim is heard. Likewise, a claim of commercial confidence under Section 8(1)(d) is usually raised by the third party who supplied the data, through a Section 11 representation. But the PIO must keep the inquiry sequential: first, does any Section 8/9 exemption apply; second, if disclosure is nevertheless proposed, has the Section 11 procedure been followed. Conflating the two leads to the common mistake of refusing information “under Section 11,” which is jurisdictionally wrong.

There is a further refinement. Section 8(2) provides that notwithstanding the Official Secrets Act, 1923 or any of the exemptions in Section 8(1), a public authority may allow access to information if the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interests. This statutory override sits alongside the proviso to Section 11(1), and together they form the public-interest spine of the Act. When a third party objects on Section 8(1)(d) commercial-confidence or Section 8(1)(j) privacy grounds, the PIO must consciously perform the balancing the statute commands rather than treating the exemption as absolute. The default direction of travel is disclosure; the exemptions are read narrowly and the override generously, consistent with the Act's transparency object.

Examination Bodies: CBSE v. Aditya Bandopadhyay

In Central Board of Secondary Education v. Aditya Bandopadhyay, (2011) 8 SCC 497, the Supreme Court held that an examinee has a right under the RTI Act to inspect and obtain certified copies of his evaluated answer-books. The CBSE had resisted on the ground that it held the answer-books in a fiduciary capacity under Section 8(1)(e). The Court rejected this: an examining body does not stand in a fiduciary relationship with the examinee in respect of the evaluated answer-book, and the material is therefore disclosable.

For Section 11 purposes the case is doubly instructive. First, the Court clarified that the right to information extends only to information that exists and is held by the public authority — the Act does not require a PIO to create or collate new information. Second, the Court's narrowing of “fiduciary relationship” controls when a third party (here, the examiner or the Board) can plausibly resist disclosure on confidentiality grounds, which in turn governs whether a Section 11 notice can yield a sustainable objection. The Court explained that a fiduciary relationship is one founded on trust and confidence where one party acts for the benefit of and is bound to protect the interests of the other — the classic examples being trustee and beneficiary, guardian and ward, or lawyer and client. An examining body, by contrast, owes no such duty of single-minded loyalty to the candidate whose script it marks; it owes a duty to the public to evaluate fairly. That reasoning has been carried forward into every subsequent fiduciary-claim case and is the analytical key to resisting spurious confidentiality objections raised through Section 11.

Interview Boards: Bihar PSC v. Saiyed Hussain Abbas Rizwi

Bihar Public Service Commission v. Saiyed Hussain Abbas Rizwi, (2012) 13 SCC 61, refined the examination-body line. The applicant sought the names and addresses of interview-board members, their tabulated marks, and related particulars. The Supreme Court drew a careful distinction. Information that enables an applicant to assess the fairness of the selection process — such as cut-off marks and the marks awarded — is disclosable, and the Commission does not hold it in a fiduciary capacity.

But the identity of individual interviewers and examiners attracts protection: their disclosure could endanger the members and expose them to pressure, and that interest is weighed against the limited public benefit of revealing names. The case is a textbook illustration of the Section 11 balancing exercise — the third party (the board member) has a genuine confidentiality and safety interest that the PIO must weigh under the proviso to Section 11(1) read with Section 8(1)(g) and (j), without treating the objection as conclusive.

Regulators and Fiduciary Claims: RBI v. Jayantilal Mistry

In Reserve Bank of India v. Jayantilal N. Mistry, (2016) 3 SCC 525, a batch of appeals raised whether the RBI could withhold inspection reports of banks, lists of defaulters, and similar supervisory material on the ground that it held the information in a fiduciary relationship with the regulated banks (Section 8(1)(e)) or that disclosure would harm economic interests (Section 8(1)(a)).

The Supreme Court emphatically rejected the fiduciary claim. The RBI is a statutory regulator whose duty runs to the public, depositors, the economy and the banking sector — not a fiduciary of the banks it supervises. The regulator-regulated relationship is one of statutory oversight, not trust-and-confidence in the fiduciary sense. The practical consequence for Section 11 is sharp: when a regulated entity objects to disclosure of material it supplied to its regulator, the objection cannot be sustained merely by labelling the relationship fiduciary. The PIO must test the claim against the true nature of the relationship, and the public-interest proviso will frequently favour disclosure.

The Court was emphatic that the RTI Act, being a later and beneficial statute aimed at transparency, would prevail over confidentiality clauses in older banking legislation to the extent of any inconsistency, and that exemptions are not to be enlarged by importing notions of confidentiality that the Act does not recognise. The decision is the high-water mark for transparency against regulators and a frequent citation whenever a powerful institutional third party attempts to use Section 11 as a shield. For exam purposes, pair Jayantilal Mistry with Aditya Bandopadhyay: both dismantle inflated fiduciary claims, the former in the regulatory context and the latter in the examination context.

Privacy of Public Servants: Girish Ramchandra Deshpande

Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner, (2013) 1 SCC 212, is the leading authority on the privacy exemption that Section 11 most often serves. The applicant sought a public servant's service record, memos and show-cause notices, details of assets and investments, gifts received, and income-tax returns. The Supreme Court held that such material is “personal information” within Section 8(1)(j) — it relates to the individual and bears no nexus to any public activity or interest — and is therefore exempt unless a larger public interest is shown.

Because the information concerned a third party (the public servant), Section 11 is the natural procedural route: the PIO would notify the officer, invite a representation, and then weigh the privacy interest against any public-interest justification. Deshpande has been criticised for setting the privacy bar high, but it remains binding and is routinely cited by PIOs and Commissions to deny third-party personal information absent a demonstrated public interest. The case also illustrates the interface between Section 11 and the privacy jurisprudence consolidated in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, which recognised informational privacy as part of the fundamental right under Article 21. After Puttaswamy, the Section 8(1)(j) inquiry that a Section 11 notice typically ventilates must be conducted with privacy treated as a constitutionally protected interest, balanced against the competing public interest in disclosure — a balancing the proviso to Section 11(1) and Section 8(2) already mandate.

Judicial Records: CPIO, Supreme Court v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal

The Constitution Bench in Central Public Information Officer, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal, (2020) 5 SCC 481 (decided 13 November 2019), held that the office of the Chief Justice of India is a public authority under Section 2(h) and that asset declarations of judges are amenable to disclosure, the public interest in judicial accountability outweighing the privacy claim.

For Section 11 the judgment is directly relevant. In respect of information concerning judicial appointments and inter-collegium correspondence — material that touches third parties such as candidate-judges — the Court did not order blanket disclosure but remitted the matter, directing that the PIO apply the balancing test and follow the Section 11 procedure where third-party interests are engaged. The case confirms that even at the apex of the judiciary, third-party rights are protected procedurally through Section 11 rather than by an outright bar on disclosure.

The judgment is a model of the layered analysis Section 11 demands. The Court accepted that judges and candidate-judges have a privacy interest in personal information, recognised the institutional interest in candid collegium deliberations, and yet held that none of these interests amounts to a blanket immunity. Each request must be tested individually, the public-interest balance struck transparently under Section 8(1)(j) and Section 8(2), and the third party heard through the Section 11 notice. The asset declarations were ordered disclosed because the public interest in an accountable judiciary was found to outweigh the limited privacy intrusion; the collegium correspondence was remitted precisely so that the balancing and the third-party hearing could be done properly rather than pre-empted. It remains the leading modern statement on how Section 11 operates at the intersection of privacy, public interest, and institutional confidentiality.

How a PIO Should Apply Section 11 in Practice

A disciplined PIO works through the section in sequence. Step one: identify whether the requested record relates to or was supplied by a third party and was treated by that party as confidential. If not, Section 11 is not triggered and the request is decided on its merits under Section 7. Step two: if triggered, issue written notice within five days, clearly stating the request and the intended disclosure, and invite the third party's representation within ten days. Step three: consider the representation alongside the applicable exemptions in Sections 8 and 9 and the public-interest proviso. Step four: take a reasoned decision within forty days of the original request, communicate it in writing to the third party, and inform the third party of the Section 11(4) right of appeal.

Two cautions recur in Commission decisions. A PIO must not invoke Section 11 as a routine excuse to delay; and a PIO must not abdicate by treating the third party's objection as binding. The decision is the PIO's, supported by reasons, and subject to appeal by either side. These obligations sit within the wider duties surveyed in Obligations of Public Authority.

Common Errors and Exam Traps

For judiciary and CLAT-PG candidates, the predictable traps are worth memorising. First, Section 11 is procedure, not exemption — refusal grounds always live in Sections 8 and 9. Second, the timeline is 5-10-40, not 5-10-30; the forty-day outer limit is the deliberate extension. Third, the third party has a voice but no veto, and an independent right of appeal under Section 11(4) read with Section 19. Fourth, the proviso to Section 11(1) carves out trade or commercial secrets protected by law from easy override, while permitting disclosure of other confidential material on a public-interest balance. Fifth, “third party” under Section 2(n) includes a public authority. Mastering these distinctions, together with the case law from Aditya Bandopadhyay through Jayantilal Mistry to Subhash Chandra Agarwal, equips a candidate to answer almost any Section 11 problem.