Right to Information Act

The Right to Information (RTI) is an act of the

Parliament of India which sets out the rules
and procedures regarding citizen’s right to
information. It replaced the former Freedom of
Information Act, 2002. Under the provisions of
RTI Act, any citizen of India may request
information from a “public authority” which is
required to reply expeditiously or within thirty
days. In case of matter involving a petitioner’s
life and liberty, the information has to be
provided within 48 hours. The Act also
requires every public authority to computerize
their records for wide dissemination and to
proactively publish certain categories of
information so that the citizens need minimum
recourse to request for information formally.
The RTI Bill was passed by Parliament of
India on 15 June 2005 and came into force
with effect from 12 October 2002. Every day
on an average, over 4800 RTI applications
are filed. In the first ten years of the
commencement of the act over 17,500,000
applications has been filed.
Judgements on RTI or Information Law
Information law/RTI is one of the important
laws applicable in India. Now there is a
modern technology to acquire information to
be collected, stored, used, analysed. To
protect the right of individuals of information
there are various laws. The one of Information
Act, 2000. The Act is established to protect
the right to get information of the individuals.
The information law governs the extent to the
citizens to access the information from the
Central Government and other public
authorities. The information law is guard to
protect from misuse of private and confidential
information by the public authorities,
employers, media and others. The information
law has its scope in other fields of legal
practices such as environmental law, public
law, employment law and business law.
Now the information related to the
government and other public authorities are
also available online on their portal. We can
get information anywhere anytime by using
their portal. There is also law which deals with
networking information that is Information
Technology Act. The right to information is the
fundamental right of the individuals. In this
topic there are various judgments. In this
article we will focus on top 30 important case
laws relating information law.

Central Public Information Officer,

Supreme Court of India vs. Subhash
Chandra Agarwal, 2020
Facts of the Case
In this case, three appeals were filed which
arises from three different Applications filed by
respondent, Subhash Chandra Agarwal
before Central Public Information Officer
(CPIO), Supreme Court.

Held
Apex Court dismissed the appeal and upheld
the Delhi High Court judgment by directing the
Central Public Information Officer, Supreme
Court to furnish information regarding
collegium decision-making, personal assets of
judges, correspondence with CJI. No general
decision came up relating to the universal
disclosure of above-mentioned information.

UPSC v. Angesh Kumar, AIR 2018

Facts of the case
Some unsuccessful candidates in the Civil
Services (Preliminary) Examination, 2010
approached the High Court for a direction to
the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)
to disclose the details of the marks (raw and
scaled) awarded to them in Civil Service
(Prelims) Examination, 2010. The information
in the form of cut-off marks for every subject,
scaling methodology, model answers and
complete results of all candidates were also
sought.

Judgment
The Court read the inherent limitation in
Sections 3 and 6 as pertaining to revelation of
information that 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. UPSC
was accordingly directed to disclose the raw
marks as well as the model answers of the
questions in the examination. The Supreme
Court referred to the problems in showing
evaluated answers sheets in the UPSC Civil
Services Examination in Prashant Ramesh
Chakkarwar v. UPSC, 2013.