New Delhi: Supreme Court It on Monday agreed to rule on three petitions alleging that amendments to the Right to Information (RTI) Act through the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill provide authorities with a way to deny processing of information on “personal” grounds, thereby rendering the previous legislation ineffective, but rejected a plea to retain provisions in the DPDP Act that prioritize the right to privacy over the right to information.Senior advocates A M Singhvi, Vrinda Grover and advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the three PIL petitioners, told the CJI bench of Justices Surya Kant, Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi that while the RTI Act initially exempted personal information that had no connection with a person’s public activities, the current amendment to the RTI Act through the DPDP Act bars all “information relating to personal matters”.The bench said the petitioners’ concerns would be examined keeping in mind the need to balance the right to privacy and information.“To some extent, this is a complex, sensitive but interesting issue that requires balance,” the bench said while firmly rejecting Bhushan’s plea for stay on Section 8(1)(j) of the amended RTI Act.One NGO petitioner stated: “Unamended Section 8(1)(j) is not just a statutory exception; it embodies the proportionality mechanism mandated by the legislation. It exempts personal information only where the disclosure is irrelevant to any public activity or interest or would result in an unjustified invasion of privacy, requiring disclosure even where the larger public interest justifies it.”
