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| + | ====== State of U.P. v. Raj Narain (1975) — the right-to-know seed ====== | ||
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| + | {{ : | ||
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| + | <WRAP center round info 95%> | ||
| + | **Quick Reply:** Raj Narain had beaten Indira Gandhi in the Allahabad High Court' | ||
| + | </ | ||
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| + | <WRAP center round info 95%> | ||
| + | **Supreme Court of India** · 1975-01-24 · (1975) 4 SCC 428 · **★ Landmark** | ||
| + | </ | ||
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| + | //The case that said the governed may see what the government does — three decades before Parliament agreed.// | ||
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| + | ===== Case details ===== | ||
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| + | ^ Court | Supreme Court of India | | ||
| + | ^ Decided | 1975-01-24 | | ||
| + | ^ Citation | (1975) 4 SCC 428 | | ||
| + | ^ Bench | A.N. Ray, K.K. Mathew, M. Hameedullah Beg, Y.V. Chandrachud, | ||
| + | ^ Petitioner | State of U.P. | | ||
| + | ^ Respondent | Raj Narain & Ors. | | ||
| + | ^ RTI Act sections | — | | ||
| + | ^ Outcome | Applicant allowed | | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===== Outcome ===== | ||
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| + | Foundational articulation of citizen' | ||
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| + | ===== The setting ===== | ||
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| + | * The 1971 Rae Bareli election: **Raj Narain lost to Indira Gandhi**, then petitioned the Allahabad High Court alleging corrupt practice — and won there in 1975. | ||
| + | * The State appealed to the Supreme Court and claimed **privilege under Sections 123 and 162 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872** over the **Blue Book** — the security protocol for the Prime Minister' | ||
| + | * The question was old and raw: can the executive certify documents secret and end the inquiry? | ||
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| + | ===== What the Court held ===== | ||
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| + | * **The privilege is not a master key.** A claim under §123 Evidence Act is addressed to the **court**, which weighs disclosure against public injury — the government' | ||
| + | * **Mathew J., for the Bench:** "the people of this country have a right to know every public act, everything that is done in a public way, by their public functionaries"; | ||
| + | * **Responsible government presupposes an informed people** — secrecy over routine public business is not in the public interest. | ||
| + | * The Blue Book itself: routine security arrangements could not be wholesale privileged; the court examined the documents. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===== The line from 1975 to 2005 ===== | ||
| + | |||
| + | * **S.P. Gupta v. Union of India** ([[/ | ||
| + | * The movement years — MKSS's Jan Sunwais, the 1996 Beawar dharna — turned the principle into a demand for a statute. | ||
| + | * The **RTI Act, 2005** operationalised it: what Mathew J. located in Article 19(1)(a) became §3's enforceable right, with §§10 and 11 answering the balance Raj Narain struck between openness and injury. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===== Ratio decidendi ===== | ||
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| + | The privilege of non-disclosure for " | ||
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| + | ===== Keywords ===== | ||
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| + | right to know, Article 19(1)(a), foundational, | ||
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| + | ===== Later rulings that cite this case ===== | ||
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| + | * [[/ | ||
| + | * [[/ | ||
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| + | ===== Similar cases in the corpus ===== | ||
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| + | //These rulings have the closest editorial ratio to this case — computed by tf-idf cosine similarity over ratio, keywords and Act sections. Useful starting points if you are researching the same point of law.// | ||
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| + | * [[/ | ||
| + | * [[/ | ||
| + | * [[/ | ||
| + | * [[/ | ||
| + | * [[/ | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===== Related ===== | ||
| + | |||
| + | * [[https:// | ||
| + | * [[https:// | ||
| + | * [[: | ||
| + | * [[: | ||
| + | * [[: | ||
| + | * [[:act|The RTI Act, 2005 — annotated]] | ||
| + | * [[https:// | ||
| + | * [[/book|The RTI Playbook book]] | ||
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| + | ===== FAQs ===== | ||
| + | ==== Is a 1975 Evidence Act ruling still good law for RTI? ==== | ||
| + | The RTI Act now governs access to records in public authorities, | ||
| + | ==== What was the Blue Book? ==== | ||
| + | The security protocol for the Prime Minister' | ||
| + | ==== Who won the appeal? ==== | ||
| + | The Court examined the documents with the privilege claim failing in material part; the greater legacy is the right-to-know holding, not the election result (the Emergency had already overtaken the case politically). | ||
| + | ==== How do I use it in an RTI matter? ==== | ||
| + | Cite it for the proposition that secrecy claims are tested, not obeyed — the ancestor of demanding a reasoned §8 refusal, and of the Commission' | ||
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| + | <WRAP center round alert 95%> | ||
| + | **Editorial summary, not a certified report.** The ratio here is an editorial compression. Before citing this ruling in a PIO order, FAA speaking order, or any appellate filing, **verify against the full reported decision**. RTI Wiki is not a legal service. | ||
| + | </ | ||
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| + | //Editorial summary · expanded 27 August 2026; citation, date and Mathew J. holding verified against indiankanoon.org/ | ||
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| + | {{tag> | ||