Privacy, Transparency, and Constitutional Accountability: A Critical Analysis of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and its Impact on the Right to Information Regime in India
In the current research paper, the constitutionality of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 and the subsequent 2025 Rules are analyzed with regards to the historic case of Venkatesh Nayak v Union of India (2026). The paper will discuss the transparency-privacy paradox as it applies to the amendments in the right to information Act 2005 section 8(1)(j) through the insertion of section 44(3) in the Act. It claims that the amendments are privacy-based and do not take into consideration the right to know as articulated in Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. It also considers the provisions under the Act under the sections 17 and 36 that give exemptions to the state and also demand that the fiduciary should part with the information to the state without any such exceptions or checks as the proportionality test in the Puttaswamy judgment. It discusses the institutional independence of Data Protection Board of India regarding the executive dominance in the process of selecting the members of the board and the applicability of the principle of the separation of powers.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits remixing, adapting, and building upon the work for non-commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited.