Transparency in Governance — Ethical Standards

Entry	Year	Description	Impact
Act 24 of 2019	2019	The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019 changed sections 13 and 16 so that the terms of office of Central and State Information Commissioners would be prescribed by the Central Government in place of the earlier fixed five-year wording. It also changed the provisions for salaries, allowances and other service conditions and added corresponding rule-making powers in section 27. The text retains protection against disadvantageous alteration after appointment and savings for commissioners appointed before commencement.	Transparency depends partly on the bodies that hear access disputes. This amendment is relevant to the institutional arrangements for those bodies, rather than to the definition of a record or an automatic new exemption. Distinguish what Parliament delegated from the details later prescribed through rules. A sound answer can examine independence, consistency and accountability using the statutory design; the amendment alone does not prove how an individual appeal was handled.
Act 22 of 2023, s.44(3)	2023	Section 44(3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 substituted clause (j) of section 8(1) of the RTI Act with the personal-information clause. This particular amendment came into force on 13 November 2025 under clause (a) of G.S.R. 843(E). The commencement notification uses different dates for different provisions of the DPDP Act; the RTI change must therefore be identified by its own section rather than assumed from the Act’s enactment year.	When using older transparency judgments, identify the statutory wording that the court interpreted and then check the changed provision. A 2019 discussion cannot be repeated as though no amendment followed it. Public-authority coverage, the nature of a requested record and the applicable disclosure process remain separate questions. The amendment calls for careful legal analysis of personal information; it does not turn every item of government business into personal data.