New Delhi: MPs of the opposition INDIA bloc have in a letter to Union minister for information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw demanded a repeal of Section 44(3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, and said that the provision has a “draconian impact” on the rights of citizens and the freedom of the press by destroying the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

In a joint press conference addressed on Thursday (April 10) by Gaurav Gogoi (Congress), M.M. Abdullah (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), Priyanka Chaturvedi (Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray faction)), Javed Ali (Samajwadi Party), John Brittas (Communist Party of India (Marxist)) and Naval Kishore (Rashtriya Janata Dal), the parliamentarians said that their letter to the minister already includes 120 signatures and will be sent in the coming days.

The letter, seen by The Wire, has been signed by members of the Congress, DMK, Shiv Sena (UBT), Samajwadi Party and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar).

It also includes the signatures of Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, and urges Vaishnaw to repeal Section 44(3), which amends the RTI Act.

“This amendment poses a serious risk of undermining people’s ability to access critical information under the RTI Act. Specifically, the amendment to Section 8(i)(j) of the RTI Act, as introduced by Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act, seeks to exempt all personal information from disclosure,” it says.

The letter states that Section 44(3) removes the exceptions within Section 8(i)(j) of the RTI Act.

“Previously, personal information could be withheld only if it was not related to public activity or interest or if its disclosure would cause unwarranted invasion of privacy. Furthermore the amendment removes the critical proviso of Section 8(1) that stated ‘information which cannot be denied to parliament or a state legislature shall not be denied to any person’.

“The amendments made through the DPDP Act drastically weaken the RTI Act and will have a detrimental impact on [citizens’] fundamental right to information. We believe that the legal framework for privacy and data protection should complement the RTI Act and in no way undermine or dilute it,” the letter said.

Gogoi said that this Bill was passed when the entire country was witness to the no-confidence motion that was brought to address the situation in Manipur and that it should have been deliberated upon.

“The recent amendments have a draconian impact on the rights of citizens and freedom of the press,” said Gogoi.

“If you want to know to which contractor the tenders for the bridges that collapsed in Bihar were given by the officials, then through this Act, you will not be able to do so. Very surreptitiously, mischievously and maliciously, the right to information has been snatched,” he said.

Brittas said that the RTI Act was a “milestone in the trajectory of India to be a modern democracy – to bring transparency in administration and to empower the citizens and activists.”

“With a single stroke, the Modi government has done away with the RTI. This will have far-reaching implications for the freedom of the press,” he said.

Brittas said that many of the provisions in the Act are contrary to the report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee that studied the legislation.

Earlier, opposition MPs who were members of the department-related parliamentary standing committee on communications and information technology said to The Wire that the committee had adopted a report titled ‘Citizen’s data security and privacy’ on July 26, 2023 that examined the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill and contained the committee’s recommendations on the same.

However, opposition members in the committee said they did not approve of the report mainly because, according to them, it was prepared by the committee by bypassing parliamentary procedure.

Concerns regarding the legislation’s impact on the RTI Act were also raised by opposition members when the Bill was tabled in parliament in August 2023. It was ultimately passed as opposition members staged a walkout.

Ali said during the press conference on Thursday that when the Modi government amended the RTI Act in 2019, the law was weakened.

“Now through this Data Protection Act, the government is going to eliminate the remaining rights of the public also. This government loves hiding information, it does not want the public to get information,” he said.

Chaturvedi said that the right to information is being taken towards the “road to ignorance” with this amendment.

“You are taking the right to information towards the road to ignorance so that people do not get to know about any corruption. The DPDP Act in 2019 had no such provision; in 2021, after it went to the JPC [joint parliamentary committee], [there was] no such provision. In 2023, they brought in these provisions. The changes we have indicated in our letter are made so press freedom is not eroded further,” she said.