Does India's Right to Information framework still hold government accountable?

The Right to Information (RTI) Act, passed in 2005, lets any citizen formally demand information from government bodies, enforced by Information Commissions that can compel disclosure. It is widely regarded as one of independent India's most significant transparency reforms. The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019, changed how Information Commissioners' tenure and salary are decided, and critics argue this has reduced the independence the original Act was designed to protect.

The RTI Act, 2005 built on earlier state-level right-to-information laws and a long civil society campaign, most associated with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan's grassroots transparency movement in Rajasthan in the 1990s. As originally passed, it fixed Information Commissioners' tenure at five years and set their salary and status on par with the Chief Election Commissioner, deliberately insulating them from government pressure.

The 2019 amendment removed that fixed five-year tenure and the constitutional-body-equivalent salary structure, giving the central government discretion to set Information Commissioners' tenure, salary, and terms of service by rule, including for state-level commissioners, whose terms had previously been a state matter. The amendment was passed without prior public consultation with the Central Information Commission itself, which has been a separate point of criticism.

• RTI applications remain a regularly and widely used tool by journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens to extract government data otherwise unavailable, and have driven major corruption exposures since 2005.
• The 2019 amendment changed appointment terms but did not remove citizens' core right to request information or the requirement that public authorities respond.
• Courts retain oversight, and Information Commission orders, while sometimes slow, remain legally enforceable.

• Removing the fixed five-year tenure and constitutional-body-equivalent salary makes Information Commissioners' continued service and compensation dependent on the government they are meant to hold accountable, undermining the independence the original Act was designed to ensure.
• Extending central control over state Information Commissioners' terms, previously a state-level decision, has been criticised as reducing federal autonomy in an area the original Act left to the states.
• Vacancies in Information Commissions and slow disposal of appeals (sometimes taking years) have been a long-standing implementation problem that critics say the 2019 changes did nothing to fix and may have worsened by adding uncertainty to commissioners' tenure.

Freedom of information laws are now common internationally: Sweden's date to 1766, the oldest in the world, while the United States' Freedom of Information Act (1966) and the United Kingdom's Freedom of Information Act (2000) are closer comparators for India's 2005 law. Independence of the appointing or oversight body is a recurring design question everywhere; the UK's Information Commissioner's Office, for instance, is structured as an independent regulatory body with statutory protections for its tenure, the kind of insulation critics argue India's 2019 amendment moved away from rather than toward.

The government's position, including statements made when the amendment was passed, is that Information Commissions are statutory bodies created by ordinary legislation, unlike the Election Commission which has constitutional status under Article 324, and that equating their service conditions was an anomaly needing correction. Opposition parties, transparency activists, and several former Information Commissioners have argued the practical effect is to make the institution more responsive to the government of the day.

This question sits on the Authority axis: support for strong, independent oversight institutions reads as favouring checks on executive power, while comfort with greater central government control over those institutions reads as favouring concentrated executive authority.