Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday urged Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw to repeal a section of the Data Protection Act, 2023 which he claimed "destroys" the RTI Act, 2005.
In a letter to Vaishnaw, Ramesh said Section 44 (3) of the Data Protection Act, 2023 seeks to substitute clause j (information which relates to personal information) in sub-section (1) of section 8 of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
He further said that everything in the sub-section gets deleted due to the change, including the proviso which stated that "provided that the information which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a state legislature shall not be denied to any person".
"The Proviso in Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, 2005 that gives citizens equal right to information as legislators who represent them is totally eliminated," Ramesh said.
The existing Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, 2005 had enough guardrails to protect unwarranted invasion of privacy, he argued in his letter.
"In the interests of transparency and accountability, I would urge you to pause, review and repeal Section 44 (3) of the Data Protection Act, 2023 which destroys the RTI ACT, 2005," Ramesh said in his letter to Vaishnaw.
