Hurdles in the Implementation of the RTI Act

In one line

The Act is well drafted and the difficulty is everywhere else: vacancies in the Commissions, backlogs, records that were never kept, officers who refuse and are not penalised, applicants who are attacked, and two amendments that have weakened it.

In the words a student can write in an exam: the hurdles in the implementation of the Right to Information Act 2005 are institutional, administrative, legal and social. Institutionally, the Information Commissions function with vacancies and large backlogs, and their independence was reduced by the Right to Information (Amendment) Act 2019, which moved the tenure and salary of the Commissioners from the statute into rules made by the Government. Administratively, section 4 proactive disclosure is poorly complied with and record management is weak, so that information which should never have been asked for is asked for and cannot be found. Legally, the exemptions are invoked expansively and section 8(1)(j) was substituted with effect from 13 November 2025 to exempt personal information without the balancing test it formerly contained. Socially, applicants have faced harassment and violence, and the whistleblower statute meant to protect them has never been brought into force.

1. Institutional hurdles

Vacancies and backlogs

The Commissions are the enforcement machinery of the Act, and an appeal that takes two years to be heard is a right denied. Vacancies in the posts of Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners have repeatedly been left unfilled, and the resulting backlog is the most frequently cited failure of implementation.

The structural point worth making: the Act gives the Government the power to appoint the body that hears appeals against the Government's own refusals, and imposes no deadline for doing so. Section 12(2) says the Commission shall consist of the Chief Information Commissioner and such number of Information Commissioners not exceeding ten as may be deemed necessary, which leaves both the number and the timing to the appointing authority.

Independence weakened by the 2019 amendment

Sections 13 and 16, as substituted by sections 2 and 3 of the Right to Information (Amendment) Act 2019, being Act 24 of 2019, with effect from 24 October 2019, replaced the fixed statutory term of five years with "such term as may be prescribed by the Central Government", and made salaries, allowances and other conditions of service likewise a matter of prescription by that Government, with a proviso only against variation to disadvantage after appointment.

The objection is the one made about tribunals in [Tribunalisation and the Threat to Judicial Independence: the Tribunals Reforms Act 2021]: an adjudicator whose tenure and pay are fixed by the party that appears before him is not structurally independent.

The 2019 amending Act was itself repealed by the Repealing and Amending Act 2023, which is why India Code lists it as "(Rep., Act 37 of 2023)". That is housekeeping and does not restore the earlier wording, because repealing a spent amending Act does not undo the amendment: section 6A of the General Clauses Act 1897.