Ashwini Vaishnaw's stand on RTI Act not satisfactory, says Congress's Jairam Ramesh

New Delhi: Disagreeing with Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's response to his earlier charge that the Right to Information (RTI) Act , 2005, has been weakened through section 44(3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh argued the minister's reply has not addressed the concerns.

In his response to Vaishnaw's reply, Ramesh wrote to him on Sunday, saying, "First, Section 3 of the DPDP Act, 2023 cited in your letter as protecting disclosure under the RTI Act 2005, is wholly irrelevant since section 81 of the RTI act 2 1005 itself has been amended drastically.

Section 3 of the DPDP Act will now only protect disclosures as per the amended RTI Act which exempts all personal information from being accessible. Second, the operation of RTI Act 2005...has demonstrated that the law is able to withhold the disclosure of personal information which has no relationship to any public activity or public interest." He further said the deletion of the proviso in section 8(1) of the RTI Act, 2005, which recognises the citizens right to information as being at par with that of legislators "is completely unwarranted".