Right to Information Act, 2005

Right to Information Act, 2005
It is an act to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens to secure access to information under the control of public authorities, in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority, the constitution of a Central Information Commission and State Information Commissions and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
Citation	Act No. 22 of 2005
Territorial extent	Whole of India except Jammu and Kashmir
Enacted by	Parliament of India
Date enacted	15-June-2005
Date assented to	22-June-2005
Date commenced	12-October-2005 First RTI application submitted by Shahid Raza Burney to a police station in Pune on 12 October 2005
Status: In force

12-October-2005

Right to Information (RTI) is an Act of the Parliament of India "to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens" and replaces the erstwhile Freedom of information Act, 2002. Under the provisions of the Act, any citizen of India may request information from a "public authority" (a body of Government or "instrumentality of State") which is required to reply expeditiously or within thirty days. The Act also requires every public authority to computerise their records for wide dissemination and to proactively certain categories of information so that the citizens need minimum recourse to request for information formally.

This law was passed by Parliament on 15 June 2005 and came fully into force on 12 October 2005. The first application was given to a Pune police station. Information disclosure in India was restricted by the Official Secrets Act 1923 and various other special laws, which the new RTI Act relaxes. It codifies a fundamental right of citizens.

The Act covers the whole of India except Jammu and Kashmir, where J&K Right to Information Act is in force. It covers all constitutional authorities, including the executive, legislature and judiciary; any institution or body established or constituted by an act of Parliament or a state legislature. It is also defined in the Act that bodies or authorities established or constituted by order or notification of appropriate government including bodies "owned, controlled or substantially financed" by government, or non-Government organizations "substantially financed, directly or indirectly by funds" provided by the government are also covered in the Act.

Private bodies are not within the Act's ambit directly. In a decision of Sarbjit roy vs Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission, the Central Information Commission also reaffirmed that privatised public utility companies fall within the purview of RTI. As of 2014, private institutions and NGOs receiving over 95% of their infrastructure funds from the government come under the Act.

The Central Information Commission (CIC), consisting of Satyanand Mishra, M.L. Sharma and Annapurna Dixit, has held that the political parties are public authorities and are answerable to citizens under the RTI Act. The CIC, a quasi-judicial body, has said that six national parties - Congress, BJP, NCP, CPI(M), CPI and BSP and BJD - have been substantially funded indirectly by the Central Government and have the character of public authorities under the RTI Act as they perform public functions In August 2013 the government introduced a Right To Information (Amendment) Bill which would remove political parties from the scope of the law. In September 2013 the Bill was deferred to the Winter Session of Parliament. In December 2013 the Standing Committee on Law and Personnel said in its report tabled in Parliament

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