Table of Contents

Methodology — how RTI Wiki sources, verifies, and publishes

⚠️ DPDP Rules, 2025 (14 Nov 2025) amended Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act — public-interest override now under Section 8(2). Read the note →

· 2026/04/19 05:02

Open methodology for everything we publish. If a researcher or journalist wants to reproduce or audit any RTI Wiki claim, this page tells them exactly how.

Source hierarchy

We use sources in this order of preference:

  1. Statutes — RTI Act 2005, state RTI rules, related Acts (DPDP, CrPC, CCS Pension Rules, etc.)
  2. Constitutional bodies — Supreme Court, High Court, CIC, SIC orders + judgments
  3. Government circulars — DoPT Master Circular, ministry OMs, CVC manuals
  4. Official portals — sansad.in, rsdoc.nic.in, lsdoc.nic.in, eci.gov.in, prsindia.org datasets, gov ministry portals
  5. Authoritative secondary — PRS India, Common Cause, SNS reports, MyNeta, ADR
  6. News organisations — The Hindu, The Wire, Caravan, LiveLaw, Bar & Bench (specific stories cited)

We do not use sources of unverified provenance (random forums, undated screenshots, anonymous tipoffs).

Data pipelines

Live structured data is mirrored from authoritative APIs:

Dataset Source Update cycle
Rajya Sabha members https://rsdoc.nic.in/MemberGetData/getmemberall Monthly
Lok Sabha members https://sansad.in/api_ls/member Monthly
Parliament bills https://sansad.in/api_rs/legislation/getBills Weekly
MP photos https://sansad.in/getFile/… Quarterly
Wikipedia bios https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/ Monthly
State portal status Manual periodic verification Quarterly
CIC orders CIC website + manual indexing Continuous

Source URL is preserved for every record. Every CSV download bears a “source” header.

Article structure

Every editorial article follows the 14-block citizen-first format:

  1. Direct-answer block (≤50 words)
  2. Hero image
  3. DPDP banner (cookie compliance)
  4. Lead paragraph
  5. Legal framework (collapsible — citizens skip; lawyers expand)
  6. Key principles (5-7 bullets)
  7. Decision framework (5-7 numbered steps)
  8. Template (copy-ready text in `<code>` block)
  9. Illustrations (subject- or case-wise)
  10. Case-law anchors (2-4 citations with takeaway)
  11. Common mistakes (5-6 bullets)
  12. Pro tips (4-5 bullets)
  13. FAQs (3-5 Q&A)
  14. Conclusion + Related reading + Sources + Last-reviewed date + tags

AI assistance disclosure

We use LLMs (Anthropic Claude, Groq, OpenAI) for:

We do NOT use LLMs to author the 700+ editorial articles or the case-law summaries without human verification of every fact.

Fact-check protocol

Each article passes through:

  1. Author — drafts + cites
  2. Editor — independent review against sources
  3. Auto-checker — CMS scans for unlinked-citation, broken-link, missing-source
  4. Publication — green Verified badge applied
  5. Re-review cycle — 12 months evergreen, 3 months time-sensitive

When a CIC/SC/HC ruling we cite is reversed or modified, we update the article within 14 days of becoming aware.

Reuse

Editorial content: CC-BY 4.0 with attribution. Datasets: CC-BY 4.0. Tools: free use, no payment, no API rate limit other than fair use.

Reproducibility

Want to reproduce our state-portal status table? CIC backlog stats? Bill counts? Every claim has a Source line at the bottom of its article. Click through. If you find a discrepancy, file a correction.

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