RTI and the Judiciary: What You Can and Cannot Ask Courts Under the RTI Act

When people think of filing an RTI application, they usually think of filing it against a government ministry, a municipal corporation, or a public sector undertaking. Filing RTI against a court — including against the Supreme Court of India — is less commonly discussed, and often misunderstood. There is a perception in some quarters that courts are above the RTI Act, or that the separation of powers somehow insulates them from transparency obligations. That perception is wrong. But so is the opposite extreme: the idea that RTI gives citizens open access to a judge's reasoning, case files, or internal deliberations about judicial appointments. The reality is more carefully balanced, and understanding where exactly that balance falls is essential before you decide whether and how to file an RTI with a court.

This guide explains the legal framework, the landmark Supreme Court judgment that settled the core question, and the practical distinctions between what courts must disclose and what they legitimately can decline to disclose.

Are Courts "Public Authorities" Under the RTI Act?

Yes. Courts are public authorities under Section 2(h) of the Right to Information Act, 2005.

Section 2(h) defines "public authority" as any authority or body or institution of self-government established or constituted by or under the Constitution, or by any other law made by Parliament, or by any other law made by the State Legislature, or by notification issued or order made by the appropriate Government. This definition is deliberately broad. It covers:

• The Supreme Court of India: Constituted under Article 124 of the Constitution of India. It falls squarely within Section 2(h)(a) — established by or under the Constitution.
• High Courts: Constituted under Article 214 of the Constitution. Similarly covered.
• District Courts and Subordinate Courts: Established under state legislation or by order of the respective High Court. Covered under the "law made by the State Legislature" or "order made by the appropriate Government" limbs of Section 2(h).
• Tribunals: Bodies such as the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), the National Green Tribunal (NGT), the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), and the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) are all established by Acts of Parliament. They are public authorities under Section 2(h).

The RTI Act does not carve out an exemption for constitutional courts or for the judiciary as a branch of government. The fact that a court exercises adjudicatory functions — that it decides cases, interprets law, and issues orders — does not make it exempt from transparency obligations in respect of its administrative functions. The distinction between a court's adjudicatory role and its administrative role is central to understanding the entire framework.

The Landmark Judgment: CPIO, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal (2019)

The question of whether the Supreme Court itself — and in particular, the office of the Chief Justice of India — constitutes a public authority under the RTI Act was a contested and protracted legal battle. It was finally settled in 2019 by a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court.

The case arose from RTI applications filed by journalist and RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal, who had sought information about assets declared by Supreme Court judges, correspondence between the Chief Justice and the government on judicial appointments, and deliberations of the collegium (the body of senior judges that recommends appointments and transfers of judges). The Central Public Information Officer of the Supreme Court had declined to disclose this information, leading to a sequence of appeals that eventually culminated before a Constitution Bench.

The Constitution Bench, in CPIO, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal, decided in November 2019, held:

First: The office of the Chief Justice of India is a public authority under Section 2(h) of the RTI Act. This ended any argument that the CJI's office stood outside the RTI framework.

Second: This does not mean all information held by or relating to the CJI's office is automatically disclosable. The Court held that information requests — including requests for judge's asset disclosures and collegium-related information — must be evaluated through a balancing test. The right to information under the RTI Act must be balanced against the right to privacy under Article 21 and the broader principle of judicial independence.

Third: The Court emphasised that judges' personal asset disclosures — while held by the Supreme Court — involve personal information within the meaning of Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, which exempts personal information whose disclosure has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of privacy. The Court held that the larger bench's decision (i.e., the Chief Justice's decision) on whether to disclose judges' personal asset information would be subject to this balancing exercise rather than being automatically public.

What the Agarwal judgment did not do is equally important to state clearly. It did not create a blanket right to all information held by courts. It did not hold that collegium deliberations are freely disclosable. What it did was establish a framework: courts are public authorities, transparency applies to them, but the specific information sought in any given RTI must still be evaluated against the exemptions in Section 8 of the Act, including the privacy exemption and the exemption for information that would impede judicial independence.

Cite this case accurately when you rely on it: CPIO, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal, (2020) 5 SCC 481 — Constitution Bench, five judges. Do not cite it for more than it holds.

What You CAN Get From Courts Through RTI

The clearest category of RTI-able information from courts is administrative information — information about how the court operates as an institution, manages its resources, and discharges its administrative functions. Here is a breakdown of what is well within scope:

Court Pendency and Disposal Statistics

Courts compile detailed statistics on cases: how many were filed in a given year, how many were disposed of, how many remain pending, and in some cases how long pending cases have been waiting. This is administrative management data. Aggregate statistics of this kind have no bearing on the adjudicatory process and are disclosable.

You can ask for: total cases filed and disposed in a specific court (or a specific bench type, such as the criminal division or family courts) for a specified financial year; total cases pending as of a specific date; average time between filing and disposal; strength of judicial posts (sanctioned versus actual); and vacancy details for both judicial and administrative staff.

Much of this data is also available on the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) at ecourts.gov.in, which publishes real-time and historical case pendency data across High Courts and District Courts. RTI is the appropriate backup when the portal's data is incomplete, when you need certified figures for a legal proceeding, or when you need information at a level of granularity the portal does not provide.

Budget Allocation and Infrastructure Expenditure

Courts are funded from public money — either the Consolidated Fund of India (for the Supreme Court) or state consolidated funds (for High Courts and subordinate courts). Budget allocations, actual expenditures on court infrastructure, and contracts awarded for court construction or renovation are all public spending records that are RTI-able.

If you want to know what a specific court complex renovation cost, who was awarded the construction contract, or how much has been allocated to build the new court building in a district, these are legitimate and answerable RTI questions.

Court Fee Schedules and Stamp Duty Rates

The fee structure for filing cases, the rates of court fees under the Court Fees Act, and the scale of stamp duty are administrative information routinely held by court registries. This information is useful for litigants and is straightforwardly disclosable.

Copies of Judgments and Orders in Concluded Cases

Judgments and orders of courts are public documents — this is a fundamental principle of the open justice system. Once a case is decided, the judgment or order is part of the public record and can be obtained. For most courts, judgments are available through the respective High Court websites or through the Supreme Court's website. For the District Court level, ecourts.gov.in is the primary source.

RTI is the appropriate route when the judgment is not available through official online portals (which sometimes have gaps, particularly for older cases), when you need a formally certified copy (though note the next section on this), or when you are seeking a specific ancillary order or interlocutory order in a concluded matter that is not separately uploaded.

Staff Matters: Salaries, Vacancies, Transfers

Administrative matters relating to the court's staff — the cadre of court staff below the judicial level, including stenographers, peons, process servers, and administrative officers — are RTI-able. Salary structures, recruitment norms, vacancy positions, and transfer orders for administrative staff are all within scope.

Details of Court-Attached Services

Legal aid cells attached to courts, translation services, mediation centres, and other facilities available to litigants are administrative arms of the judiciary. Information about how these services are funded, how many people they serve, and how to access them is disclosable.

What You CANNOT Get From Courts Through RTI

Understanding the limits is just as important as understanding what is available.

Judges' Deliberative Notes and Reasoning While Deciding Cases

The process by which a judge arrives at a decision — notes made while reading the brief, tentative views formed during the hearing, draft versions of a judgment before it is finalised — is protected and not subject to RTI. This protection is not purely procedural; it is grounded in the principle of judicial independence. A judge who knows that every note made while deciding a case can be accessed by any party through RTI cannot be expected to think freely and honestly through the issues before the court.

There is no explicit RTI Act provision that exempts judicial deliberations, but several grounds support non-disclosure: the principle of judicial independence itself, the fact that deliberative notes are not "information" in the sense of final administrative records, the privacy protection under Section 8(1)(j), and — where the notes relate to matters still being decided — the potential to impede the justice process.

This also means you cannot use RTI to see whether a judge considered a specific argument, what the judge's view was at an early stage, or what was discussed in a judges' conference about a pending matter.

Collegium Deliberations and Appointment Recommendations

The collegium — the body of the five most senior judges of the Supreme Court that recommends appointments and transfers of High Court and Supreme Court judges — is one of the most sensitive institutional matters in Indian constitutional law. In the aftermath of the Agarwal judgment, there has been some increased transparency: collegium resolutions (the formal outcomes of collegium meetings) are now published on the Supreme Court's website in certain cases.

However, the deliberative notes and internal communications of collegium meetings — the actual discussions about candidates, the views expressed by individual judges, the back-and-forth before a final resolution — are not disclosed through RTI, and the courts have treated this as protected by a combination of the judicial independence principle and the privacy rights of judges and judicial candidates. The Agarwal judgment expressly noted that the balance between transparency and judicial independence required careful consideration in this context and did not mandate blanket disclosure of collegium deliberations.

It is important to state this position fairly: the question of how much transparency should apply to the collegium is a legitimately contested one in Indian public law, and civil society organisations have advocated for more disclosure. But as of the current legal position, internal deliberations of the collegium are not RTI-able.

Sealed Cover Information

"Sealed cover" refers to the practice — employed by the Supreme Court and some other courts in certain sensitive cases — of receiving information from investigating agencies or parties in a sealed envelope that is reviewed by the judge but not disclosed to the other parties in the proceeding. By definition, this information is already the subject of a judicial order restricting its disclosure.

Section 8(1)(b) of the RTI Act exempts from disclosure information the disclosure of which has been expressly forbidden by any court of law or tribunal or the disclosure of which may constitute contempt of court. Sealed cover information falls squarely within this exemption.

More broadly: any information in a sub-judice matter that is subject to a court order restricting its dissemination — including confidentiality orders, gag orders, or orders placing records under seal — cannot be obtained through an RTI application to the court's registry. The court order takes precedence.

Information Exempt Under Section 8(1)(j): Personal Records of Judges and Staff

Personal information about judges or court staff — medical records, personal financial details beyond what is held in an official capacity, private correspondence — is protected under Section 8(1)(j), which exempts personal information whose disclosure has no relationship to any public activity or interest or would cause unwarranted invasion of privacy.

The Agarwal judgment specifically discussed judges' asset declarations in this context, holding that the balance between the public's right to know and a judge's right to privacy required case-by-case consideration rather than a blanket disclosure rule. The fact that a judge has voluntarily disclosed assets within the judicial institution does not automatically mean those disclosures are RTI-able to any member of the public.

Case Files of Pending (Sub-Judice) Matters

You cannot use RTI to access the case file of a matter that is currently pending before a court. The file contains pleadings, evidence, affidavits, and correspondence between parties that have not yet been adjudicated. Accessing another party's case file through RTI would undermine the integrity of the judicial process and could result in serious procedural prejudice. For pending matters, the proper route is the court's registry procedures for inspecting your own file as a party to the proceedings.

Certified Copies vs. RTI: Which Should You Use?

This is a practical distinction that saves time and confusion.

For certified copies of judgments and orders needed in legal proceedings: use the court registry's formal process for issuing certified copies, not RTI. Every court has a procedure for issuing certified copies — you file an application, pay the prescribed fee, and the registry produces a copy stamped and certified as a true copy. This copy is legally admissible in other courts and proceedings in a way that a plain photocopy obtained through RTI is not.

Certified copies through the registry are typically faster for commonly-requested judgments, and the output — a formally certified document — is precisely what you need for appellate filings, documentary evidence, or other legal use.

RTI is better for courts when:

• The registry is unresponsive and you need to formally force the issue within a legally prescribed timeline.
• You are seeking bulk data (pendency statistics, aggregate case numbers, budget allocations) rather than copies of specific orders.
• You need administrative information about the court institution itself — contracts, staff vacancies, infrastructure expenditure — rather than case-related documents.
• You are researching or investigating systemic issues (such as pendency in a specific court type, or the budget for a specific court complex) where no single document serves the purpose.
• You need information about a concluded case that is not available on any online portal and the registry is not responding to informal requests.

For case-related documents in concluded matters, RTI and the registry copy process are both theoretically available, but the registry process typically produces a more directly usable output.

RTI for High Courts: Who is the CPIO?

Each High Court operates as a public authority in its own right. The Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) for a High Court is typically the Registrar General of that High Court, or a designated officer of equivalent seniority. The exact designation varies by High Court — some designate the Registrar (Judicial) or the Principal Private Secretary to the Chief Justice as the CPIO for specific categories of information.

You can usually find the CPIO designation on the High Court's official website. If it is not listed, address your RTI application to the "Central Public Information Officer, Name of High Court" and it will be routed appropriately.

First Appeal under Section 19(1) for High Court RTIs goes to the First Appellate Authority designated by the High Court — usually the Registrar General or a senior judge of the administrative side.

Second Appeal is jurisdictionally complex and worth noting carefully. For most state government public authorities, the Second Appeal under Section 19(3) goes to the State Information Commission (SIC). But High Courts are not ordinary state government bodies. Some High Courts have taken the position — and there is a constitutional argument behind it — that a second appeal against a High Court's RTI decision should lie with the High Court itself through its original jurisdiction, rather than with the SIC. This position remains contested. Several State Information Commissions have asserted jurisdiction over High Court RTI matters, and High Courts have in some cases challenged this. If you are filing a Second Appeal in respect of a High Court RTI, be aware that the question of whether the SIC has jurisdiction over the High Court is not uniformly settled across all states, and you may need to take legal advice in your specific state.

RTI for District Courts: Who is the CPIO?

For District Courts and subordinate courts, the CPIO is typically the District Judge of the concerned district or a designated administrative officer of the District Court establishment. The exact designation again varies by state.

Second Appeals for District Court RTIs go to the State Information Commission (SIC) of the relevant state, as District Courts are part of the state judicial administration under the High Court.

Administrative matters relating to District Court staff — salaries, vacancies, recruitment, transfers of non-judicial staff — are clearly within scope and the District Judge (as CPIO) must respond to these within the prescribed timeline.

RTI for Tribunals and Quasi-Judicial Bodies

Tribunals set up by Act of Parliament — including the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), the National Green Tribunal (NGT), and the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) — are all public authorities under Section 2(h) of the RTI Act.

The same framework applies: administrative information (budget, staff, pendency statistics, infrastructure) is disclosable; deliberative/adjudicatory information about pending cases is not. The CPIO for most tribunals is the Registrar of the tribunal.

Since these tribunals are established by Acts of Parliament and are Central Government bodies, Second Appeals go to the Central Information Commission (CIC) — not to any State Information Commission.

One practical point: tribunals vary widely in their RTI responsiveness. Some — particularly the CAT, which handles service matters for Central Government employees — have significant RTI infrastructure. Others are smaller bodies with less dedicated RTI-handling capacity. If a tribunal does not respond within 30 days, a First Appeal and then a Second Appeal to the CIC is the correct escalation path.

Section 4 and Proactive Disclosure by Courts

Section 4 of the RTI Act requires every public authority to proactively publish a substantial volume of information: its structure, functions, decision-making norms, budget, and more. This obligation applies to courts and tribunals as well.

In practice, proactive disclosure by courts is variable. Some High Courts publish detailed budgets, pendency data, and administrative circulars on their websites. The Supreme Court publishes cause lists, constitutional bench matters, and — since the Agarwal judgment — certain collegium resolutions. But full Section 4 compliance — with regularly updated, comprehensive proactive disclosures — is not uniformly achieved across all courts and tribunals.

If a court is not complying with its Section 4 obligations, that failure is itself a matter that can be raised in a Section 18 complaint to the relevant Information Commission.

A Practical Note on Where to Look Before You File

Before filing an RTI for court-related information, check the following primary sources:

• ecourts.gov.in / National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG): For case status, case pendency statistics by court and district, and case hearing schedules across most courts in India.
• Supreme Court website (sci.gov.in): For Supreme Court judgments, cause lists, orders, constitutional bench schedules, and published collegium resolutions.
• Individual High Court websites: For High Court judgments (many are on the High Court's own portal), vacancy notices, and administrative circulars.
• Judgments portals like IndianKanoon.org: Not an official source, but often useful for checking whether a judgment has been uploaded officially.

RTI is the correct route when these sources do not have what you need, or when you need a certified copy rather than an unofficial PDF download, or when the information you need is administrative rather than case-related.

Putting It Together

Courts are public authorities under the RTI Act, and the Supreme Court's five-judge Constitution Bench in CPIO, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal (2019) unambiguously confirmed this. That judgment established that the office of the Chief Justice of India itself falls within the RTI Act's framework. But the judgment is careful and balanced: it did not convert courts into fully transparent administrative bodies. It maintained meaningful protection for judicial deliberations, personal information of judges, and collegium processes, while requiring courts to respond to legitimate requests for administrative information under the same 30-day clock that applies to any other public authority.

The practical implication is this: if you want court pendency data, budget figures, staff strength, infrastructure contracts, or information about administrative court processes, RTI is a legitimate and effective tool. If you want to access a judge's reasoning before the judgment is delivered, see what was said in a collegium meeting, or obtain sealed-cover material from a sub-judice matter, RTI will not help — and the refusal will be on sound legal grounds.

Understanding this distinction means you can file precisely, get answers, and not waste effort pursuing information the Act genuinely does not require courts to provide.

If you are filing an RTI with a court, tribunal, or judicial body and want to make sure your application is targeted to the right authority and asks the right questions, RTISathi.com has department-specific filing guides and sample RTI formats. A precisely drafted application — one that asks for administrative information in clear, specific terms — is far more likely to produce a useful response within the 30-day window than a vague request that gives the CPIO room to hedge or refuse.