The draught of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, which was released for public comment on November 18 by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, includes a provision that proposes to amend the Right to Information Act 2005.

According to advocacy group CUTS International, the draught Digital Personal Data Protection bill skips "Right to Privacy" in the preamble and gives the government unrestricted powers. "Moving away from its previous version, the bill skips mention of the fundamental right to privacy in its preamble and narrows the scope of the law from data protection to digital personal data protection excluding non-personal data, which is rather desirable. In doing so, the bill takes away the categorisation of personal data, especially sensitive personal data, thereby painting all personal data with the same regulatory brush," CUTS said in a statement.

Clause 30(2) of the draught proposes a change to Section 8(j) of the RTI Act, which would completely exempt personal information from disclosure. Section 8(j) of the RTI Act states that information relating to personal information is exempt from the RTI Act if its disclosure has no relationship to any public activity or interest or would result in an unwarranted invasion of the individual's privacy. However, if the Public Information Officer is satisfied that "the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information," the authority can direct the disclosure of such personal information.

The draught Digital Personal Data Protection bill proposes to remove all restrictions on the disclosure of personal information, as well as the powers of Public Information Officers to allow disclosure of such information in the larger public interest. The proviso to Section 8(j) is also proposed to be removed. Shailesh Gandhi, a well-known RTI activist and former Central Information Commissioner, has expressed concern about this proposal, which he believes will "significantly weaken the RTI Act."

"This will make RTI Right to Denial of Information. Most information relates to a person and thus could be denied. Even now many PIOs, Commissions and Courts deny personal information. What has been de facto is being converted into de jure. This is the biggest step to weaken RTI and its potential to curb corruption and wrongdoing. Citizens must protest and send their objections", he said.