The End of Public Interest Transparency? Supreme Court Tackles the DPDP-RTI Collision Course

The DPDP Rules Are Here, But the Act is on Trial

As of July 2026, the long period of "suspended animation" is finally over. The Central Government has officially notified the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025, giving the much-debated 2023 Act its procedural teeth. However, for practicing lawyers and compliance professionals, the notification of the Rules is overshadowed by a massive constitutional showdown brewing in the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has issued notice challenging the constitutionality of the DPDP Act and its Rules, recognizing that the battle lines between data privacy and public transparency have been dangerously blurred. For litigators, corporate counsel, and privacy advocates, the landscape is shifting daily, and the stakes could not be higher.

The Death of the "Public Interest" Exception in RTI

The most critical battleground for practitioners right now is the insidious amendment to the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, smuggled in via the DPDP Act. Specifically, the Supreme Court is scrutinizing Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act, which amended Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act.

Previously, Section 8(1)(j) exempted personal information from disclosure unless the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) or the appellate authority was satisfied that the larger public interest justified the disclosure. It was a delicate balancing act between the fundamental right to privacy (post-Puttaswamy) and the fundamental right to know.

Section 44(3) obliterates this balance. It imposes a near-total blanket ban on the disclosure of personal information, stripping away the "larger public interest" caveat entirely. The Supreme Court has rightly termed this "serious and debatable," transferring the matter to a larger Bench.

"By removing the public interest exemption, the legislature has effectively weaponized privacy to shield administrative opacity. For writ courts and PIL practitioners, this cuts off the primary artery for gathering evidence against state machinery."

We are already seeing the fallout. The Kerala High Court recently ruled that the RTI Act cannot be used to bypass the strengthened privacy framework under the DPDP Act, heavily restricting access to files involving personal data in disciplinary proceedings. For lawyers representing whistleblowers, journalists, or marginalized communities, this means standard RTI fishing expeditions are dead on arrival. You must now prepare to challenge RTI rejections strategically, framing them as constitutional violations rather than mere statutory appeals.

AI, Intellectual Property, and the "Lazy" Regulatory Approach

While the privacy versus transparency debate rages, the intersection of AI and Intellectual Property is forcing courts to do the legislature's job. The Delhi High Court has ordered the Copyright Office to decide on a plea by Stephen Thaler regarding the copyrightability of AI-generated artwork within 8 weeks.

This is a watershed moment for Indian IP law. The traditional threshold of "sweat of the brow" and "modicum of creativity" relies on the premise of a human author under Section 2(d) of the Copyright Act, 1957. If the Copyright Office rejects Thaler's plea, it cements the human-centric requirement. If they accept it, it opens a Pandora’s box of commercial litigation over AI-generated assets.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) Secretary has gone on record stating the government prefers to use "existing legal frameworks" to govern AI rather than introducing new regulations. This is, frankly, lazy policymaking.

Corporate lawyers are already dealing with the fallout of this approach. Legal experts have pointed out a massive "blindspot" in Section 8(5) of the DPDP Act regarding the use of AI by employees. When employees feed confidential client data or proprietary code into generative AI tools, it triggers an absolute nightmare for Data Fiduciaries. The current law fails to adequately address how IP ownership and data breach liabilities intersect when third-party AI models scrape this inputted data. Advising corporate clients to rely on "existing laws" for GenAI is borderline malpractice; law firms must immediately draft aggressive, bespoke internal AI-usage policies for their clients.

TDSAT: The Wrong Forum for Data Disputes

Finally, we must address the sheer absurdity of the enforcement mechanism. The DPDP Act routes appellate disputes to the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT).

TDSAT is a specialized tribunal built for spectrum allocation, telecom licensing, and broadcasting disputes. Asking it to adjudicate complex nuances of consent architectures, algorithmic bias, and cross-border data transfers under the DPDP Act is like asking a tax tribunal to try a murder case. It is fundamentally the wrong forum. Practitioners should brace for logically inconsistent rulings and severe adjudicatory bottlenecks at the TDSAT level, meaning the real jurisprudence will ultimately have to be forged through writ petitions under Article 226 before the High Courts.

The Bottom Line for Practitioners

The notification of the DPDP Rules, 2025 means the grace period is over. Data Fiduciaries must comply immediately. But for the litigator, the real action is in the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court. Watch the larger Bench's decision on Section 44(3) closely—it will determine whether the RTI Act survives the decade. And keep an eye on the Copyright Office's 8-week deadline; how you draft software and content licensing agreements will change overnight based on their decision.