Hello, 

Next week on Monday, the Supreme Court will be hearing The Reporter’s Collective’s petition against the Union Government of India, fighting key provisions in the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act. 

With this new law the Indian government has handed itself unbridled power to withhold information, which can hold those in power to account. All in the name of privacy. 

This law will paralyze our Right to Information (RTI). It will also impede investigative journalism by preventing access to critical information that inform citizens about the current state of governance. 

Journalists, researchers and civil society organisations have used the RTI law to expose corruption and scrutinise those in power.

We at The Reporters’ Collective have also relied extensively on RTIs filed by us or our collaborators, to uncover information about various schemes and government policies. 

This is why on February 16, we filed a petition in the Supreme Court to fight against the provisions of the DPDP Act that stand to dilute the RTI as they peg privacy against the access to information.

But, the DPDP Act of 2023 and the rules that operationalised the law in 2025, are the recent in a long list of attacks on our right to information. Since the RTI Act came into being in 2005, governments in the Centre and the state have consistently denied requests for information. Our project RTI404 chronicles this death of RTI that has happened over years, one denial at a time. 

The project is a collaborative art and journalism project built around a growing database of denials – RTI applications that have received contradictory or evasive responses, or no response at all. 

On the eve of its first hearing, we invite citizens, journalists, researchers and other collaborators who rely on the vital right to information to come together and discuss how we can defend our right to information. . 

Join the team of RTI404, Angana Chakrabarti, Pradip Saha & Nitin Sethi to understand how the DPDP Act dilutes the right to information and what we can do to oppose it. 

Register here to receive the livestream link to the event: https://forms.gle/D61QYFazRpJJUhRL7

Also, visit our website to look through our database of denials: https://www.rti404.com/ 

If the government has ever denied you information, you can submit those RTI denials to: https://www.rti404.com/add-to-record 

You can also support us by donating to RTI404: https://rzp.io/rzp/Ci93mci

The truth needs allies and we are counting on you.

Regards
Angana Chakrabarti 
The Reporter’s Collective