RTI by State — what each state actually asks (data analysis, 2026)

The RTI Act 2005 is a single Central Act, but how citizens use it varies sharply by state. A few reasons:

1. Each state has its own RTI Rules (fee, payment mode, language) and its own State Information Commission. Maharashtra's SIC works very differently from Tamil Nadu's.
2. Public-service delivery gaps vary by state — Bihar's PMAY-G pendency looks nothing like Punjab's, so Bihar files more housing-scheme RTIs.
3. Court interpretations vary. The Bombay HC, Madras HC and Delhi HC each have their own RTI ratio decidendi — and citizens in those states cite local HC judgments when filing First Appeals.
4. Filing language matters. A Karnataka applicant files in Kannada; a Tamil Nadu applicant in Tamil. Tools that handle only Hindi/English aren't enough.

This post surfaces, state by state, what actually shows up in court / commission decisions — which is the most honest proxy we have for “what citizens are fighting about” in that state.

1. Source dataset: RTI Wiki's curated case-law corpus — 408 decisions spanning 2005 → April 2026, with structured metadata (court, year, sections invoked, keywords, ratio).
2. State attribution: Each case is mapped to a state via its court code (e.g. HC-BOM → Maharashtra; SIC-MH → Maharashtra). Supreme Court (SC) and Central Information Commission (CIC) cases are NOT attributed to any state — they bind nationally and we exclude them from the state-level breakdowns below.
3. Top-5 keywords: For each state, we count the most-frequent keyword tags across that state's cases. We do not invent themes — keywords are exactly as recorded in the structured dataset.
4. Honest caveats: (1) The corpus is curator-selected, not random. We curated cases that matter for citizen practice — so subject distribution is biased toward issues we've seen citizens hit. (2) States with under 10 cases (Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar) yield directional signals only. (3) Where the keyword count is 1, the “trend” is really one case.

The state's RTI ecosystem is mature. The Bombay High Court has been an active interpreter (6 of 22 cases originate here), with direct-benefit-transfer (DBT) verification the most-litigated theme — typically applicants seeking traceability of disbursed amounts after Aadhaar-bank seeding failures. Deemed refusal under §7(2) shows up 3 times, indicating Maharashtra applicants escalate non-replies. Passport delay appears twice — Mumbai/Pune residents have a track record of using RTI against the RPO.

• Top keywords: Bombay HC × 6, DBT × 4, deemed refusal × 3, §2(h) × 2, passport × 2.

Delhi dominates the dataset because Delhi HC is the natural forum for litigation against Union Government PIOs (which are headquartered in Delhi). 36 of 58 cases originate from the Delhi HC. §8(1)(j) personal information is the most-litigated exemption (6 cases) — natural given the high concentration of central-govt employees + post-DPDP-2025 disputes. §24 (intelligence-org exemption) appears 4 times; CBI / IB / R&AW disclosures are a recurring battleground in Delhi specifically.

• Top keywords: Delhi HC × 36, §8(1)(j) × 6, §2(h) × 5, §24 × 4, §2(f) × 4.

Karnataka splits across the high court (only 2 KAR cases) and a long tail of DBT scheme + passport (RPO) disputes (each 2 cases). Deemed refusal also features twice. The pattern suggests citizens here are most active on scheme delivery + Union-government federal services rather than state-administered exemption fights.

• Top keywords: DBT × 4, Karnataka HC × 2, passport × 2, RPO × 2, deemed refusal × 2.

Tamil Nadu mirrors Maharashtra in volume. Madras HC is the active forum (6 cases). Notably §20 penalty appears twice — TN citizens seem more willing to push for personal PIO penalty than other states. Passport / RPO disputes (2 each) and DBT issues round out the top.

• Top keywords: Madras HC × 6, DBT × 4, §20 × 2, passport × 2, RPO × 2.

A smaller corpus, dominated by Kerala HC (4 cases). The standout: §4(1)(b)(xii) — suo motu beneficiary lists appears at the top, and the only MGNREGA-specific case in our state breakdowns is from Kerala. Kerala's §4 enforcement culture is reflected in the data.

• Top keywords: Kerala HC × 4, §2(h) × 2, DBT × 2, MGNREGA × 1, §4(1)(b)(xii) × 1.

West Bengal has the highest representation of PDS / ration card RTIs in any state's top-5 (3 cases). This aligns with the state's heavy reliance on the public-distribution system. DBT and passport also feature.

• Top keywords: DBT × 4, ration card × 3, PDS × 3, Calcutta HC × 2, passport × 2.

Small corpus. Fiduciary (§8(1)(e)) litigation tops Gujarat's pattern (2 cases) — bank/FD account-holder confidentiality disputes. Court pleadings (1) and third-party (§11) (1) round out — suggesting Gujarat's RTI cases skew toward commercial / financial confidentiality.

• Top keywords: fiduciary × 2, DBT × 2, court pleadings × 1, third party × 1, Gujarat HC × 1.

Rajasthan is the birthplace of the modern RTI movement (MKSS, Aruna Roy, Lal Diary public hearings 1990s). Today PDS leakage still surfaces in our data. §8(1)(h) investigation exemption shows up — historically a common Rajasthan PIO objection.

• Top keywords: Rajasthan HC × 2, DBT × 2, PDS leakage × 1, Rajasthan SIC × 1, §8(1)(h) × 1.

The two states share a single high court. The pattern: scholarship (2 cases) + MGNREGA (2 cases) + DBT (2). Systemic delay appears once — citizens in Punjab/Haryana are pushing on bottleneck patterns rather than one-off refusals.

• Top keywords: scholarship × 2, MGNREGA × 2, DBT × 2, Punjab SIC × 1, systemic delay × 1.

The most striking pattern: PMAY-G appears in Bihar's top-5 — and only Bihar's. This matches the state's high PMAY-G pendency. The single case named *Saroj Devi* (a panchayat-level applicant) is one of the few entries where the applicant's name is preserved in the citation.

• Top keywords: DBT × 2, Saroj Devi × 1, PMAY-G × 1, BPO × 1, Patna HC × 1.

UP's pattern is dominated by AwaasSoft (PMAY-G's MIS — 3 cases) + DBT (4) + passport (2) + RPO (2). Deemed refusal features twice. UP citizens are pushing on state-implementation transparency (Awaas+, DBT) more than central-govt exemption fights.

• Top keywords: DBT × 4, Awaas+ × 3, passport × 2, RPO × 2, deemed refusal × 2.

Sample sizes are tiny. DBT is the only consistent top-5 entry across all three. Telangana has hospital-billing + Ayushman Bharat once each. Andhra Pradesh features one RFCTLARR (land acquisition) case — pointing to the state's active land-rights litigation. MP mirrors UP's RPO + passport pattern at smaller scale.

Across the state breakdowns, DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) is the single most consistent theme — appearing in the top-5 of every state with > 8 curated cases. This is consistent with what we see across the wiki: scheme delivery RTIs (PMAY, MGNREGA, EPF, NSAP, scholarship) are the citizen-RTI engine that grew explosively after 2014 when most schemes moved to DBT rails.

A second consistent pattern: passport delay + RPO RTIs cluster in metro/urban states (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, UP, MP) where Regional Passport Offices are based. They are conspicuously absent from rural-state corpuses (Bihar, Rajasthan).

A third observation: §8 exemption fights are concentrated in Delhi. Outside Delhi, exemption-clause litigation is rare in our corpus. This supports the view that Union Government PIOs are the most §8-prone, while state PIOs are more often litigated for delay / non-disposal rather than for refusal grounds.

1. If you live in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, UP, West Bengal, Karnataka: your state's case law corpus is large enough to find a relevant precedent for most RTIs. Use the case-law search filtered by your state's HC code.
2. If you live in a small-corpus state (Gujarat, Rajasthan, Bihar, Telangana, AP, MP, NE states): there's less local precedent — but Supreme Court rulings (Aditya Bandopadhyay 2011, Girish Deshpande 2013, Jayantilal Mistry 2015, R.K. Jain 2013, Khanapuram Gandaiah 2010) bind nationally and can be cited in any state.
3. If you're filing on a scheme RTI (PMAY, MGNREGA, EPF, NSP, ration card): scheme-specific RTI templates are more useful than state-specific case law. We have copy-ready templates for each — see /states.html for state-routed entry points.

1. We do not claim these patterns reflect the actual volume of RTIs filed in each state — we have no access to that data. Each State Information Commission publishes its own annual report with that breakdown; there is no national consolidated dataset.
2. We do not claim the keyword distribution would replicate on a random sample — our 408-case corpus is curator-selected for citizen-practice value.
3. We do not claim any state-level “RTI culture” exists as a fixed thing — patterns shift each year as new schemes launch and DPDP 2025 reshapes §8(1)(j).

The full case-law corpus is downloadable as cases-corpus.csv under CC-BY 4.0. Anyone can re-run this analysis. The script we used is a straightforward `csv.DictReader` + `Counter` over the `keywords` column, grouped by `court` field — about 30 lines of Python.

If you have access to State Information Commission annual reports for any year and would like to contribute a richer state-level distribution to RTI Wiki, please email [email protected].

• All 28 states + 8 UTs — directory
• Maharashtra · Delhi · Karnataka · Tamil Nadu · Kerala · West Bengal · Gujarat · Rajasthan · Uttar Pradesh · Bihar

Last reviewed: 24 April 2026.