Supreme Court Refers Challenge to DPDP Amendment of RTI Act to Larger Bench

The Supreme Court on 16 February 2026 issued notice on petitions challenging the amendment to Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act, 2005, brought in through the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice V.M. Pancholi declined to stay the operation of the amended provision and referred the matter to a larger bench for detailed hearing in March 2026.

Petitioners, including Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, journalist Nitin Sethi, and The Reporters Collective, contend that the DPDP amendment replaces the earlier balancing test between transparency and privacy with a near-blanket bar on disclosure of personal information. Under the original Section 8(1)(j), as interpreted by the Constitution Bench in Central Public Information Officer v. Subhash Aggarwal (2019), information officers had to weigh public interest in disclosure against the privacy interests of individuals.

Senior Advocate Vrinda Grover argued that the amendment effectively discards this calibrated approach, describing it as using “a hammer” where the earlier law used “a chisel.” The bench acknowledged the tension between the fundamental rights to information and privacy, with CJI Surya Kant observing that some “creases” between the two need to be ironed out. However, the Court reiterated that legislation cannot ordinarily be stayed through an interim order without a conclusive finding of unconstitutionality.

With the stay refused, the amended Section 8(1)(j) remains in force. Public authorities and information officers processing RTI applications must now apply the narrower DPDP standard on personal data disclosure, even as its constitutional validity is under scrutiny. Organisations should closely monitor the upcoming March 2026 hearings before the larger bench and be prepared to recalibrate their RTI handling practices again, depending on how the Court ultimately reconciles the competing claims of transparency and data protection.