Environmental Information: the Right, the Route and the Exemptions

In one line

There is no environmental information law in India, so a citizen who wants a monitoring report uses the Right to Information Act 2005, and the industry answers with the commercial confidence exemption.

In the wording a student can write in an examination: section 4 of the Right to Information Act 2005 obliges every public authority to maintain and publish specified categories of information without being asked; section 6 provides for a request and section 7 for its disposal within thirty days, or within forty-eight hours where the information concerns the life or liberty of a person; section 8 exempts certain information, including in clause (d) commercial confidence, trade secrets and intellectual property whose disclosure would harm the competitive position of a third party, unless the competent authority is satisfied that larger public interest warrants disclosure; section 8(2) permits access where the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interests; section 11 provides the third party procedure; and section 19 the first and second appeals.

Where environmental information sits without the Act

The notification of 2006 publishes some of it. The sector-specific standard terms of reference on the Ministry's website, which are all that stage 2 as substituted by S.O. 751(E) of 17 February 2020 requires to be displayed (the 2006 text required each project's approved terms of reference on the websites of the Ministry and the State authority); the summary assessment report and the application on the websites within seven days of the request for a hearing; the draft report available for inspection on written request until the hearing; the public hearing proceedings displayed at the panchayat, the Zila Parishad, the District Magistrate's office and the Board and on the Board's website; the decision and the appraisal committee's final recommendations as public documents on expiry of the period for decision; and the half-yearly compliance reports as public documents, given to any person on application and with the latest on the authority's website.

The OSH Code publishes some of it. Section 84 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020, which replaced section 41B of the Factories Act 1948 on 21 November 2025, requires the occupier of a factory involving a hazardous process to disclose the dangers, including health hazards, and the measures to overcome them to the workers, the Chief Inspector-cum-Facilitator or Inspector-cum-Facilitator, the local authority and the general public in the vicinity, and to make the safety measures in the on-site emergency plan known to the public living nearby.

The Ecomark Rules publish some of it. Rule 11(3) requires the Central Pollution Control Board to publish the holders, the products, the report on the basis of which each grant was made, research, benefits and global best practices.