Section 5 — Designation of Public Information Officers

5(1) — Designation. Every public authority shall, within one hundred days of the commencement of this Act, designate as many officers as the Central Public Information Officers or State Public Information Officers… as may be necessary… The 100-day window closed decades ago in calendar terms; the continuing duty is that designation must be sufficient — an authority that has one PIO for five thousand offices has a §5(1) problem, and Information Commissions have directed authorities to designate more PIOs and publish their names and contacts.

5(2) — Assistant PIOs. At each sub-divisional or other appropriate sub-district level, an Assistant Public Information Officer must be designated, whose job is to receive applications and appeals and forward them to the right PIO. Two consequences citizens actually use: an application delivered to an APIO counts as filed on the day the APIO receives it (the clock does not wait for the internal forwarding), and in an office with no visible PIO, the APIO is the lawful front door.

5(3) — The PIO's job. The CPIO shall deal with requests for information and, where a requester is sensorily disabled, render reasonable assistance — including help drafting the application to a form that gets what the person actually needs. A PIO is not a post-office for rejections; §5(3) plus §7(1) makes them the person who must find the record or give reasons.

5(4) — Seeking help. The PIO may seek the assistance of any other officer who, in the PIO's view, is better placed to give the information. This is the multi-office reality of a modern public authority: the record may sit with the accounts section, the technical wing, a field office.

5(5) — The deemed PIO. …such other officer shall render all assistance to the Central or State Public Information Officer… and for the purposes of any contravention of the provisions of this Act, such other officer shall be treated as a Central or State Public Information Officer. The officer who actually sat on the file cannot hide behind the PIO's designation. If delay or refusal happened in the accounts section, the accounts officer is the deemed PIO for that application — and §20 penalty, if it comes, comes to them.

The commonest stall in any large office is jurisdictional drift: your application lands with the PIO, who “seeks assistance” from the dealing hand, and the dealing hand simply does not reply. Without §5(5), the PIO blames the dealing hand, the dealing hand is invisible, and nobody is answerable. With it:

• Ask (in your application or first appeal) for the file movement register — the dates and designations show exactly who held the application when the clock ran out.
• Name that officer in the first appeal as the deemed PIO under §5(5).
• In a second appeal or §18 complaint, the §20(1) penalty question is then aimed at the officer who actually caused the default — Commissions routinely frame it this way, and the DoPT's own guidance (OM F. No. 1/8/2007-IR, 15 May 2008) confirms the deemed-CPIO liability operates for contraventions of the Act.

The Deemed CPIO explainer carries the full mechanics and drafting language.

An authority without a designated PIO is not outside the Act — it is in breach of §5(1). The route is a §18 complaint to the Information Commission (not just a §19 appeal, which presupposes a PIO to appeal against): complain that the authority has failed to designate/designates insufficiently, and ask the Commission to direct designation and publication of PIO/APIO names under §4 read with §5. Commissions treat “no PIO” offices as an institutional failure, not a citizen's problem.

• The authority's §4(1)(b)(xiv)–(xvi) disclosure — the directory of PIOs/APIOs and the FAA — must be on its website. Missing directory = §4 failure you can cite in the same complaint.
• If your application was received by an APIO, the 30-day clock starts at APIO receipt; a PIO who counts from the day the file reached their desk is computing the deadline wrongly.
• A PIO who answers “not my subject, ask elsewhere” without forwarding under §6(3) has abandoned both §5(3) and §6(3) — say both sections in the first appeal.

Section 5 stands as enacted in 2005 — the 2019 and 2023 amendments (terms of Information Commissioners; the DPDP Act's §8(1)(j) change) touched other parts of the Act, not this one.

Yes — §20(1) penalty for contravention attaches to the person responsible; §5(5) makes the assisting officer that person for the stretch of the process they handled.

The applicant is never the victim of a mis-forward: §6(3) gives the transferring PIO five days, and the receiving PIO the remaining time. File the first appeal against the original PIO's office; §5(5) catches whoever actually delayed.

Yes — that itself is a §4 question, and if the directory is unpublished, a §18 complaint can force designation and publication.

The Act says “sub-divisional level or other appropriate sub-district level” — where an APIO exists (post offices in several states act as APIOs), filings through them are complete on receipt.

For drafting RTIs or appeals engaging this section, use the First RTI template or the First Appeal template. See How to fill an RTI application for structural help.

• Back to the full RTI Act
• Section 6 — Request for information
• Section 6(3) — Transfer of requests
• Section 7 — Disposal
• Section 20 — Penalties
• Deemed CPIO — detailed explainer
• All explanations
• The RTI Playbook book

1. Right to Information Act, 2005, Section 5 (sub-sections 1–5), read with §§4, 6(3), 7(1), 18, 19, 20.
2. DoPT O.M. F. No. 1/8/2007-IR, dated 15 May 2008 — guidance series clarifying PIO obligations and deemed-CPIO liability.
3. Department of Personnel and Training, Guide on the RTI Act, 2005.

Last reviewed: 27 August 2026. Sub-section text and duties checked against the Act; the old page's citation of Anjali Bhardwaj v. UoI under s.5 removed (that litigation concerns ss.12/15 — see our case entry), and an unverifiable CIC file number dropped.