Future Of Transparency: RTI In The Digital Age Of Data Protection And AI
- IJLLR Journal
- Dec 26, 2025
- 2 min read
Vidhi Shrivastava, Symbiosis Law School, Pune
ABSTRACT
The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) changed the democratic environment of India as it institutionalised the access of the citizens to the information held by the state. But the swift transition to digital governance, which is characterised by the application of data-driven public service provision, algorithmic decision making, and the application of artificial intelligence (AI), has revealed structural constraints with the document- centric approach taken by the Act. The article looks at the growing conflicts between transparency and technological obscurity, especially where AI- based systems act as black boxes, and where new privacy-based legislation like the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, redefines disclosure conventions. It evaluates the growing incompatibility of exemptions in Sections 8(1)(d), 8(1)(e), and 8(1)(j) with calls of algorithmic accountability, and the further restriction of access to information vital to the governance process through the watering down of public-benefit protections.
The paper relies on international examples, such as the right to an explanation in the EU GDPR, the Directive on the automated decision-making in Canada, and the transparency principles that are used in other countries to develop their regulatory structures, which may be applied to India and its developing regulatory landscape. Recent judicial and policy trends are also evaluated in order to point out the reticent stance of the judiciary and an increasing necessity to reconcile the regimes of transparency and data protection. This paper contends that in the absence of any statutory reform, improvement of digital infrastructure, and any form of explicit clauses on the disclosure of algorithms, the RTI Act will be negated in a state of automation. It ends with a set of recommendations to reform the transparency regime in India such that technological progress does not undermine but bolsters the democratic accountability.
