Balancing Transparency And Privacy: The Right To Information Vis-À-Vis The Right To Privacy In The Digital Era After India’s Data Protection Act, 2023
- IJLLR Journal
- Oct 2
- 2 min read
Adv. G S Gokul, Assistant Professor, Indira Gandhi Law College, Ernakulam
ABSTRACT
The concern for privacy and concern for information has risen to an entirely new level of complexity in the digital era, especially after the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) in India. In the transformative judgment in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, the Supreme Court protected privacy in the Constitution as part of Article 21 as a fundamental and inalienable right. The Right to Information Act 2005, which has also been set out in Article 19(1)(a), has been, for a long time, a critical instrument for the exercise of accountability and openness in government in a democracy. This case analysis examines the impact of the DPDP Act's amendment on Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, which, by eliminating the public interest override and broadening the definition of "personal information,” considerably diminished the discretionary powers of Information Commissioners with respect to public figures.
Using a doctrinal approach, the paper analyzes relevant Indian case law, statutes, and legal systems in the UK, EU, Canada, and Australia. The review also includes an in-depth study of certain policy documents as well as legal literature. The results of this study suggest that the removal of the public interest override leads to an unreasonable imbalance of the competing interests, placing the constitutional requirement of access on the sidelines and aggravating opacity in government decision-making. The public interest jurisprudence invariably shows that advanced democracies impose measured overrides to the blanket right of privacy. This study principally considers the absence of a legal regime as the foremost defect and proposes a legal framework with a tested system of public interest override, defined narrowly and with an independent body to determine the privacy of information pertaining to the public servants. It is vital to the functioning of the legal framework to restore balance between privacy and secrecy and transcend the democratic spirit of India in the framework of governance, which is increasingly digital.
Keywords: Right to Privacy, Right to Information, Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, Transparency and Accountability, Public Interest Override.
