Is it RTI’s turn to get murdered? asks Mallikarjun Kharge

A day after the Economic Survey called for re-examining the RTI law, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday asked whether it was RTI’s turn to get murdered after MGNREGA’s “killing”.

In a post on X, Kharge accused the Union Government of systematically weakening the RTI Act and unleashing a climate of terror that punishes truth-seekers, as he pointed out that over 100 RTI activists had been murdered since 2014.

“The Economic Survey has called for ‘re-examination’ of the Right to Information Act. It also suggests a possible ‘Ministerial veto’ to withhold information and wants to explore the possibility of shielding public service records, transfers and staff reports of bureaucrats from public scrutiny.  “The Modi Government has systematically weakened the RTI Act — Over 26,000 pending cases as of 2025. In 2019, the Modi Government hacked away at the RTI Act, seizing control over Information Commissioners’ tenure and pay, converting independent watchdogs into submissive functionaries,” Kharge said in his post.

He said the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, gutted the RTI’s public interest clause, “weaponising privacy to shield corruption and stonewall scrutiny.”

Until last month (December 2025), the Central Information Commission had been functioning without a chief information commissioner. It was the seventh time in 11 years that this key post was deliberately kept vacant, the Congress chief claimed.