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What's new on RTI Wiki

The change index for RTI Wiki — fresh rulings added to the case-law corpus, SEO-upgraded pillar pages, new CPD modules, and amendment-tracking updates. Curated reverse-chronologically. Bookmark this page if you want a fast pulse on the Indian RTI landscape without subscribing to every individual article.

⚠️ 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 · 0 Comments

April 2026

  • Corpus at 362 — scraper queue promoted (+25 more) — another 25 CIC decisions (2021-2023) promoted from the queue into main corpus. Subject spread: Income Tax, RBI, Delhi Police, Dept of Space, CVC, CBI, BPCL, ICSI, Customs, GST, Home Affairs. 60 queue entries remain for future promotion. * Sitemap refreshed — 822 URLs indexed — full DokuWiki indexer run + sitemap rebuild now surfaces all 323 case pages, 7 new Section 8 framework pages, and 2 tool stubs. Sitemap declared in robots.txt (https://righttoinformation.wiki/sitemap.xml) for Google next-crawl.
  • Section 4(1)(b) Proactive Disclosure framework page — new Section 4(1)(b) — 17 Categories guide. Big SEO target (proactive disclosure RTI India). Full 17-category table, self-audit checklist, citizen enforcement playbook, Section 18/19/20 compliance path, case law, FAQs, Next Steps.
  • Image alt-text SEO audit — 12 machine-generated alt texts rewritten across pages (e.g. File Rti Online India - RTI Wiki → descriptive H1-based alt). All image refs now use descriptive keyword-rich alt text for image-search indexing.
  • LegalCase JSON-LD on all 310 case pages — Schema.org LegalCase structured data (court, date, plaintiff, defendant, citation, landmark flag, external source URL) now injected per case via meta.html. Rich-result eligibility for the entire case-law corpus. Article + BreadcrumbList + LegalCase emit cleanly on /cases/*; other pages unaffected.
  • Case-law corpus expanded to 310 curated rulings — +100 new entries across three batches (v8/v9/v10). New coverage: SIC decisions from Haryana, Assam, HP, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, MP, Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland; tribunal rulings (CAT, AFT, NCDRC); North-East HC rulings (Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal); emerging themes — DPDP 2025 prospectivity, ONDC §2(h), PM Gati Shakti §4(1)(b), Faceless Assessment anonymity, Ayush drug approvals, post-Electoral-Bonds political-party donations.
  • Third Party / §11 page rewritten for Featured SnippetsThird Party in RTI Act — Section 11 Rules, Example and Step-by-Step Guide. New: Quick Answer box, disclosure table, 5-step process flow, People-Also-Ask FAQs, traffic-distribution Next Steps block.
  • Site-wide broken-link fix — 138 namespace-relative Related links across 63 pages in sub-namespaces now resolve correctly (prefixed with ‎:‎ for root-absolute resolution).
  • Homepage SEO snippet intro — 58-word snippet-ready first paragraph now sits above the fold on /start and /act; og/twitter descriptions decoupled from hashtag pollution.
  • Case-law database now covers 160 rulings across 23 courts — Supreme Court, every major High Court, the Central Information Commission and 10 State Information Commissions. Every case has an editorial ratio, sub-section tags, an outcome classification and a “Similar cases in the corpus” block computed via tf-idf cosine similarity.
  • Citation graph live on all case pages — each case shows “This case cites” and “Later rulings that cite this case”. 53 editorial citation links wired.
  • Deep-link search/cases/search now supports URL-param pre-filtering. Every case detail page deep-links to filtered sub-searches by court, Section, and landmark flag.
  • Section 8(1)(j) after DPDP 2025 framework — SEO-upgraded with a 40-word direct answer, side-by-side amendment comparison table, and FAQ + HowTo JSON-LD schemas.
  • File RTI online — 12-step 2026 guide — upgraded with a Featured-Snippet-friendly direct answer, FAQ and HowTo JSON-LD.
  • First Appeal timelines — SEO-upgraded with direct answer + FAQ/HowTo schema.
  • CPD Course LMS live at /cpd/app — 12 modules, per-module quizzes with 70% pass threshold, 15-minute timed final exam (3 attempts max), a Coursera-style honor-code gate, and a printable certificate with unique verification serial.
  • Profile revamp — badges showcase + recent-activity feed on /profile, populated from server-side CPD state, subscriptions and activity records.
  • Forum Phase 2 — cross-user reactions (👍 ❤ 💡) persisted server-side; forum comments now round-trip to the article's own Discussion section.

November 2025 — DPDP Rules 2025 amendment

  • Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act amended by Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act, 2023, notified 14 November 2025. The clause now exempts personal information of any person without the pre-amendment “larger public interest” proviso. The override has moved to Section 8(2).
  • DPDP Rules 2025 — full amendment analysis — blog deep-dive by the Editor.
  • PIO reply under Section 8(1)(j) after DPDP 2025 — a drafting guide with three speaking-order templates.

Fresh case-law additions — last 30 days

  • Section 8(1)(a) — diplomatic correspondence, foreign confidential (CIC 2016, 2019)
  • Section 8(1)(b) — court-directed non-disclosure line (CIC 2018)
  • Section 8(1)(i) — R.K. Jain applied to State cabinets (CIC 2020)
  • Section 8(1)(j) — post-DPDP guidance (Delhi HC 2025) — landmark
  • Section 22 — overriding effect vs. Official Secrets Act (SC 2016) — landmark
  • Section 7(3) — fee-intimation procedure (SC 2021) — landmark
  • MGNREGS records — Odisha SIC 2020
  • Land acquisition — Andhra SIC 2022
  • Mining leases — Goa SIC 2021
  • Smart City SPV records — CIC 2021
  • Vaccination / Co-WIN data — CIC 2022
  • Bar Council of India status — Delhi HC 2018

Pillar-page refreshes

Each of these pillars now carries a Featured-Snippet-ready direct answer, FAQ schema, and HowTo schema where relevant:

Site infrastructure

  • Outbound email — SPF + DKIM on own DNS (no external SMTP dependency). Password-reset, registration confirmation and weekly digest mail all accepted in Inbox by Gmail/Outlook from April 2026.
  • Subscription stats — corrected to read DokuWiki's .mlist file format (previously assumed .subscribers).
  • Profile photo upload — media path corrected to $conf['mediadir']; photo now renders after upload.
  • Schema.org JSON-LD — Article + BreadcrumbList embedded on every case-detail page (coming).

How to stay current

  • Discussion forum — Reddit-style aggregated view of every article's comments in one place.
  • Weekly digest — opt in from your profile or on any article.
  • Case-law search — filter by court and year to find the 2025-26 rulings that shape post-DPDP practice.
  • Editorial blog — longer-form amendment analysis and commentary.

Discussion

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