Government proposes RTI restrictions on SHANTI Bill

The SHANTI Bill allows private nuclear energy involvement but restricts sharing of "restricted" info under RTI, raising transparency and public safety concerns.

Updated on: Dec 18, 2025, 05:29:11 IST

By Chetan Chauhan

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New Delhi: The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill that aims to allow private sector in nuclear energy debars sharing of any information declared as “restricted” by the Central government under the watershed Right to Information (RTI) Act.

The SHANTI Bill, according to the government, aims to boost investments in the nuclear power sector to help India achieve its ambitious target by 2047. (Sansad TV)

The bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

The proposed law under section 39 prevents sharing of any information that is “detrimental to national security or public interest” and provides for specifics of the restricted information.

The sub-sections say restricted information includes location, quality and quantity of prescribed substance and transactions for their acquisition, anything about design and operation of the nuclear power plant, research and technological work on materials and processing.

It also prevents sharing of “photograph, plan or model” of the nuclear power plant and related to any process in the plant.

In addition to it, the sub-section also provides that “submissions made available to the (Atomic Energy) Board or other regulatory bodies during the course of their work and declared as strategic, sensitive or confidential for business purpose by the application” would be restricted.

The proposed bill also gives powers to the Central government to “prohibit” publication of any information related to nuclear power through a notification. It also says that any information declared “restricted” or “prohibited” under the law cannot be disclosed under the Right to Information Act.

With this, the Central government has imposed restriction on the RTI use without amending the transparency act. In the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, the government had restricted sharing of personal information of any personal citing privacy regulations.

During discussion on the bill in the lower house, Supriya Sule (NCP-SP) asked the government why restrictions on the RTI Act has been imposed through the SHANTI Bill. “When private players are being allowed where does the question of national security come,” she said during discussion on the proposed law.

Anjali Bhardwaj, RTI activist, said section 39 will prevent public scrutiny in this critical sector and adversely impact public safety. “The RTI Act already has adequate safeguards to exempt sensitive information, including national security. There was no need to override the transparency law,” she said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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