How to file an RTI and what you can (and cannot) ask

What the law says

What the RTI Act gives you, and the ground rules

The Right to Information Act, 2005 lets any citizen ask for information held by a public authority, and it flows from the right to free expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. You do not have to explain why you want it. Under Section 6, you can apply in writing or electronically, in English, Hindi, or the official language of the area, and you only have to give enough contact detail to reach you.

But the right is not unlimited. It is subject to the exemptions in Section 8, which is where most requests come unstuck, so it is worth understanding both halves: how to file, and what the law will not give you.

How to file: the PIO, the fee, the format, and the 30-day clock

You send your request to the Central or State Public Information Officer of the public authority that holds the information. Keep it specific: ask for identifiable records or documents. Pay the small prescribed fee that goes with the application; the exact amount is set by the applicable rules, and the central government's rules and the various state rules differ, and a person below the poverty line pays no fee. If you accidentally send it to the wrong authority, it must be transferred to the right one within five days.

Then the clock starts. The officer must decide within 30 days of receiving the request, and within 48 hours where the information concerns someone's life or liberty. If no decision comes, that counts as a deemed refusal, and if the authority misses the deadline the information is to be provided free of charge. One catch on the clock: if the officer asks you to pay an additional fee for the actual cost of copying, the time between that intimation and your payment does not count towards the 30 days.

If they refuse or delay: first appeal, then second appeal

The Act gives you a two-tier appeal under Section 19, and the burden to justify any refusal is on the officer, not on you.

The first appeal goes to an officer senior to the Public Information Officer, the first appellate authority, inside the same public authority, and it is to be decided within 30 days, extendable to 45. If that does not resolve it, the second appeal goes to the Central or State Information Commission, which can order the information disclosed. The Commission can also impose a penalty for delay under Section 20, and that penalty stands even if the information is eventually handed over, so the timeline has teeth. Two practical points: a complaint under Section 18 is not a shortcut to compel disclosure, use the Section 19 appeal for that, and courts expect you to exhaust these appeals before going to a High Court.

What you cannot ask: the Section 8 exemptions

This half deserves equal attention, because aiming a request at exempt information is the most common way an RTI gets rejected.

The biggest limit is other people's personal information. In Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner (2012), the Supreme Court held that a government employee's service records, disciplinary history, and financial details such as assets and income tax returns are "personal information" under Section 8(1)(j), with no relationship to public activity, and are exempt unless a larger public interest is clearly shown. That said, information tied to a person's public function, such as a public employee's salary, is generally not shielded as private.

Section 8 also protects several other categories: information affecting the sovereignty, security, or strategic and economic interests of the State; anything a court has forbidden or that would be contempt; breaches of parliamentary privilege; commercial confidence, trade secrets, and intellectual property where disclosure would harm a third party; information held in a genuine fiduciary relationship; information received in confidence from a foreign government; anything that would endanger a person's life or safety or reveal a confidential source; anything that would impede an investigation or prosecution; and cabinet papers until the decision is made and complete. Where a request touches a third party's information, that third party is entitled to a hearing before anything is disclosed.

Two counterweights keep this from being a blanket wall. The exemptions are read strictly, not expansively, and there is a public interest override: under Section 8(2), as the Supreme Court held in Yashwant Sinha v. Central Bureau of Investigation (2019), even these exemptions, and the Official Secrets Act, cannot block disclosure where the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm. So exempt does not always mean unreachable, but you have to make that public-interest case.

What you can do

1. Find the right public authority and its PIO. RTI reaches records held by a public authority, so identify the department that actually holds what you want, and address the Central or State Public Information Officer there.
2. Write a specific, record-focused request. In English, Hindi, or the local language, ask for identifiable documents or records rather than opinions or "why" questions, and remember you do not have to give a reason.
3. Pay the prescribed fee, or claim your exemption. Attach the small fee set by the applicable rules; if you are below the poverty line, you pay nothing.
4. Track the 30-day clock. Expect a reply within 30 days, or 48 hours if life or liberty is at stake. No reply is a deemed refusal, and a missed deadline means the information should come free.
5. Aim inside the law to avoid a rejection. Do not ask for another person's service records, assets, or income tax details, for trade secrets, or for the other Section 8 categories, unless you can show a clear larger public interest; misdirected requests are the number-one reason RTIs are refused.
6. If refused or ignored, file the first appeal. Go to the first appellate authority, the officer senior to the PIO, within the same public authority; it should be decided within 30 to 45 days, and the officer must justify any denial.
7. Still stuck? Take a second appeal to the Information Commission. File with the Central or State Information Commission, which can order disclosure and penalise delay. Exhaust this before approaching a court.

Cases that matter

Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner (Supreme Court, 2012). A government employee's service records, disciplinary history, and financial details such as assets and income tax returns are "personal information" under Section 8(1)(j) and are exempt from disclosure unless a larger public interest is clearly shown. It is the key limit on using RTI to dig into another individual's private affairs.

Central Board of Secondary Education v. Aditya Bandopadhyay (Supreme Court, 2011). An examining body does not hold a student's evaluated answer books in a "fiduciary relationship", so students can inspect them under RTI. The fiduciary exemption is read narrowly, as needing a specific beneficiary the fiduciary must protect, though the right does not extend to demanding re-evaluation.

Central Public Information Officer, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal (Supreme Court, 2019). The office of the Chief Justice is part of a public authority and is not outside RTI, and the Court distinguished absolute exemptions from qualified ones that are subject to a public interest test. Transparency and privacy have to be balanced, rather than either being an automatic trump.

Yashwant Sinha v. Central Bureau of Investigation (Supreme Court, 2019). Under the Section 8(2) public interest override, none of the Section 8(1) exemptions, nor the Official Secrets Act, can block access where the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interest. It is the provision that can unlock otherwise exempt information in the right case.