Transparency at the Threshold: Section 44(3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the Unmaking of the Public Interest Override in the Right to Information Act, 2005

Abstract

The Right to Information Act, 2005 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 give statutory shape to two constitutional commitments that Indian law has, until recently, sought to hold in equilibrium: the citizen’s right to know and the individual’s right to informational privacy. Section 44(3) of the 2023 Act disturbs that equilibrium. By substituting the composite, three-limbed exemption contained in Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act with the bare formula “information which relates to personal information”, it removes both the “relationship to public activity” filter and 
the “larger public interest” override that had for eighteen years disciplined the discretion of Public Information Officers. This article examines the amendment as a problem simultaneously of constitutional law and of 
information science. It argues, first, that the amended clause imports an undefined term into a statute that does not define it, while the cognate definition in the DPDP Act is deliberately expansive and confined to data in digital form — a definitional mismatch that will in practice be resolved by administrative default in favour of refusal. 
Second, it contends that the severability and anonymisation apparatus already available under Section 10 of the RTI Act, supplemented by disclosure-conscious record design, offers a proportionate alternative to categorical exemption.