New Delhi: Twenty years after Parliament enacted the Right to Information Act (RTI), more Indians are using the transparency law than ever before. RTI applications rose again in 2024-25 and are now more than 30% higher than during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, suggesting enduring public faith in one of India's most consequential accountability laws.
Yet, a new analysis by information activist Venkatesh Nayak has found that as demand for information grows, the system meant to provide it is struggling—backlogs are rising, appeal disposal rates are falling, constitutional bodies are reporting questionable data, and the Central Information Commission is failing to adequately scrutinise how the law is being implemented.
On 20 June 2026, Nayak, an information activist for more than two decades and director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative India (CHRI) office, shared an analysis of the Central Information Commission’s (CIC) annual reports for 2024–25 and 2023–24 to understand how the RTI Act is being implemented across the country.
While the 2024-25 was released in February and some parts of it were reported in the media, Nayak, who has headed the access to information program at CHRI since 2005, described this as a deep dive to “spot trends of improvement and deterioration” in the implementation of the Act.
His is a study of RTI statistics reported by 53 ministries and the two independent departments of atomic energy and space, and the data of 12 key public authorities, including the president’s secretariat, the prime minister’s office (PMO), the Supreme Court, the election commission of India, the three defence forces- army, navy and air force, Delhi police, and the CIC.
In an interview with Article 14, Nayak revealed several positive and negative trends:
RTI applications increased by 2.52% in 2024–25 (1.26% excluding UTs), and were 34% higher than in 2020–21, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2024–25, RTI appeals were two and a half times the number of rejections, indicating significant dissatisfaction with responses and applicants' willingness to escalate.
For the first time, the ministry of corporate affairs (2.54 lakh RTI applications across 65 public authorities) overtook the ministry of finance (2.20 lakh across over 200 authorities) in total RTI applications received. He said this shift should be probed and understood.
The poorest first-appeal disposal rates in 2024-25 were reported by the Supreme Court of India (0.67%), the Election Commission, (1.88%), the Comptroller and auditor general (2.75%), and the PMO (6.15%).
The election commission reported zero RTI rejections in 2024–25 and 2023–24, but the RTI activist noted that two of his applications were denied, raising questions about the commission's reporting and the information commission's failure to check the numbers before submitting its annual report to Parliament.
Contrary to concerns about RTIs threatening national security, the Indian Army invoked the national security exemption only once in 2024–25 (down from 60 cases in 2023–24), with most exemptions (737 of 744) used to protect personal privacy.
Despite a 2.52% rise in RTI applications in 2024–25, application fee collections fell by 6.15% and additional fee collections by 4.21%. The ministry of corporate affairs reported a 13.07% increase in RTI requests but a 31.36% decline in total fee collection compared to the previous year.
This also raised the question of inaccurate reporting by ministries and public authorities.
What were some of the positive trends you found?
Definitely, an increase in the number of RTI applications. When one looks at the pre-COVID figures, this is a more than 30% increase. That is very gratifying to see that the requests have not gone away despite so many people writing obituaries to the Act. Along with that, the number of appeals outnumbers rejections at a 1:3 ratio, and that cuts both ways. It shows a higher number of instances of dissatisfaction, but also shows the willingness of applicants to engage with the system and escalate the intervention to the appeal stage. That shows faith in the system.
The third positive aspect is that there have been concerns that many requests are being filed with the defence forces for information on national security matters. That is a myth that last year’s data blows apart. The Indian army has rejected only one RTI application on national security grounds, and the majority of the more than 730 rejections were due to permissible exemptions (allowed by the Act) regarding personal information. A lot of people, probably serving or retired army personnel, are using RTI to seek redress for their grievances, so the fears that the nation's sensitive information, defence secrets, would become public because of the indiscriminate disclosure of information by PIOs are not happening. That, in fact, has never happened.
The Indian Army has tried to get itself excluded from the RTI, but the data shows they have no reason to fear. The existing system helps protect their sensitive information. There is no reason they should get a near-completion exclusion from RTI.
The negatives?
The negatives are the growing backlog and the inability to dispose of thousands of applications in a timely manner. The same goes for appeals. While there is an overall increase in numbers, several ministries are seeing a decline in requests coming in. That is disturbing. Is it because ministries and authorities under them are doing proactive disclosure so much better that people don’t need to file requests, or is it that people are getting frustrated by the cumbersome nature and resistance? That needs to be probed. Mere data will not tell us what is happening behind the statistics.
The information commission has to become an auditor of the RTI implementation rather than an accountant of the RTI data. And that accounting, they are also not able to do properly. The penalty-related data and the rejection-related data simply don’t match. We have been saying for several years that the data tables need to be cleaned up, particularly regarding the rejection segment.
Under section 20 of the Act, the minimum penalty amount (for a PIO for failing to provide information without reasonable cause) is Rs 250 per day. How is it that public authorities are reporting penalties as small as Rs 1, Rs 2, Rs 7, Rs 17, Rs 49? How is that even admitted as reliable data and published as a report?
This report is tabled in Parliament. There is misreporting, and unfortunately, Parliament has not found time to review the report and discuss it in detail. The oversight functions of Parliament are not kicking in.
What else is of concern?
The other negative is the very large number of rejections that happen for reasons other than those that are permissible under the Act. The only permissible exemptions are the ten clauses given under section 8(1), private copyright protection in section 9, matters related to the commercial confidence of third parties, which are protected under section 11, and everything under section 24 (the Act does not apply to certain intelligence and security organisations), except allegations relating to human rights violations and corruption. Those are the only permissible exemptions, but when 40-50% of rejections are under the “others” category, what does it mean? We raised this issue for the first time 15 years ago, when this category was emerging. The commission said in the next report, this requires probing. But who will do it? The commission has to do it, but 15 years later, it still hasn't. So, again, the commission has to do an auditing job, not an accounting job.
Another concern is how it is that application fee collection, the additional fee collection, is going down overall. Does that mean public authorities are giving away information free of charge, or is it because they are simply not accounting for the fee collection they have already done? And that is seriously problematic because that is where money is coming to the exchequer or the public authorities' bank account under the law, and that needs to be accounted for in the budget.
You noted that the election commission claimed it had rejected zero applications in 2024-2025, but your own applications—two of them—were rejected during the same period.
The election commission has said its rejection rate is 0%, with no rejections in 2024-2025. But during the same period, two of my RTI applications were rejected: one in July, disposed of in September, and the other in November, disposed of in November. In one case, they have refused to part with the information, saying the request is for voluminous material and would disproportionately divert resources. That amounts to rejection. In the other, they have said that the expenditure observers' reports will not be disclosed under 8(1)(g) (exemption if disclosure may endanger a person, identify a source or assistance given in confidence). That is a crystal clear example of the Election Commission invoking an exemption clause to reject the RTI application, but this data has not been captured. The publication information officers are not reporting the data accurately. If this is the case with the election commission, a constitutional authority, then one can only wonder what the track record of other public authorities is.
Section 7(9) (disposal because it disproportionately diverts resources or is detrimental to the safety of the record), they may say it won’t count as a rejection, but it should have at least been fitted under the “others” category because the ultimate outcome is a denial. But when they say clearly in the reply that 8(1) (g) is applicable, they are in violation of section 25 of the RTI Act, which says you have to mention the number of instances in which an exemption clause was invoked, and an exemption clause was invoked in my case.
The submission of the annual report to Parliament is a statutory obligation, and that obligation entails providing accurate reporting. Not only is the election commission failing in its duty to submit accurate data, but it is also failing in its duty to cross-check whether the data it submits is accurate.
What else did you find on the ECI?
The fact that their first appeals are of a very high order, that’s cause for concern. That shows that people’s dissatisfaction levels are much higher.
Do we know what kinds of requests there are? What are people asking most?
The data does not show any of that. It is just statistics. That would be a study of the nature of requests. This is something the public authorities have to do. And there are very good examples of central public sector undertakings that analyse the content of every single one of their applications, at least until Covid times. Every RTI appeal that has come to them, and every appeal in which they have gone and defended their decision, is analysed, characterised, itemised, and trends are shown. For example, how many applications are coming from their contractors, how many from their trade union leaders and former employees, and how many regarding recruitment exams they are conducting, service matters, and tender-related matters. I’m assuming that continues. But government departments are not doing it.
Do the ministries with increasing application numbers give a sense of what people are asking?
Not really. What we have put together is macro-level trend analysis. There are 2,303 public authorities also. We will have to conduct a public authority-wise analysis to see which public authorities the number is increasing in and which it is decreasing in. That will require machine-readable data for analysis and probably assistance from AI tools.
Which ministry is getting the most applications?
Until 2023-2024, the ministry of finance, which has 200 public authorities, reported the largest number of applications, but in 2024-2025, with 65 public authorities, the ministry of corporate affairs is showing a much bigger number of applications, two and a half lakh.
It is very clear that the ministry of corporate affairs, unlike the ministry of finance, does not regularly deal with the public. For example, the finance ministry has many banks, insurance companies, and debt recovery tribunals under it, so an entire spectrum of society—impoverished, lower-middle class, upper-middle class, economic elite—is filing RTIs. But the ministry of corporate affairs is very clear. They are a regulatory agency for companies and limited liability partnerships. It is the upper segments —the less disadvantaged sections —who might be filing those RTI applications—those who have business with companies or are themselves owners or shareholders in the company. Right now, we can only assume why the ministry of corporate affairs receives such a large number of requests. But that is again something the information commission has to probe based on an analysis of the RTI applications; what kind of information is being sought.
The registrar of companies, which comprises the bulk of the authorities under the ministry of corporate affairs, has actually put a whole lot of data about companies and LLPs in the public domain. You can view them for free on the MCA 21 website, or pay the fee stipulated under the Companies Acts and Rules. There are very few problems I have come across. Given the alternative route for people to access information from the ministry of corporate affairs, what really needs to be asked is why there are so many RTI applications.
This is a breaking trend. All these years, it was the ministry of finance that has been topping the list; all of a sudden, it is the ministry of corporate affairs. It needs to be probed.
How is the health of the RTI, given that more people are filing applications? Do you feel optimistic?
I have mixed feelings because the disposal rates are going down, the number of public information officers doing the work is going down, the number of people in appellate authorities is going down, but the workload is increasing. That is not the best way to implement the law. There are good examples of ministries like DoPT (department of personnel and training, ministry of personnel), which are increasing the number of PIOs when their requests go up. But in other ministries, the number of PIOs has declined while the number of applications has increased. This shows a lack of planning. These very high-level constitutional offices, like the PMO and the president’s office, have to appoint more PIOs. One PIO handles thousands of applications in a year. A good example is how the central information commission has appointed a substantial number of PIOs and appellate authorities, and their backlogs are not very high. Their disposal rate is 90-95%.
(Betwa Sharma is managing editor of Article 14.)
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