New Delhi: A group of 95 retired civil servants and diplomats wrote to the Union government seeking to withdraw a provision of the proposed Digital Personal Data Protection Act, Scroll reported.
The Constitutional Conduct Group in its letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister for Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said that amends to the Right to Information Act disallowing disclosure of personal information about public officials could make Right to Information Act ‘largely ineffective’.
The Centre is looking forward to amend Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act Information Act through Section 44(3) of the 2023 Digital Personal Data Protection Act, according to the report
The amendment could lead to ‘blanket ban’ on disclosing personal information but without defining what makes up ‘personal information’.
Section 8(1)(j) reportedly states: ‘Information which relates to personal information and the disclosure of which has not relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information’.
The move is criticized raising concerns that it could pose serious threat to transparency and accountability that the Right to Information Act seeks to uphold.
The group in its letter pointed out that the right to information stemmed from Article 19(1) of the Constitution that guarantees the freedom of speech and expression.
The Constitutional Conduct Group wrote that proposed amendments to Section 8(1)(j) will cripple ‘a crucial provision of the RTI Act by unconscionably enlarging the scope of the exceptions granted under Section 8 of the said Act’.
While stressing the need for protecting digital data, the group said: ‘However, we do not see any contradiction between the RTI Act and the concern to protect individual data’.