What happened
Maharashtra notified its new RTI Rules, 2026 on June 12, tripling the application fee to Rs 30 and adding Rule 7, which let Public Information Officers respond to only the first subject of a multi-part query and tell applicants to refile the rest separately. Four days later, advocate Jatin S. Adhav filed an RTI asking the Pune Traffic Police what legal authority created the 'No-Pickup Zone' outside Pune Airport and AeroMall, who approved it, and what commercial arrangements were involved with private operators. The PIO rejected the entire application outright, citing Rule 7 as grounds to duck every question at once. The backlash escalated all the way to 81-year-old RTI activist Anna Hazare threatening an indefinite hunger strike from July 5 unless the rules were scrapped. On July 2, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis ordered an immediate suspension, and the State Information Commission notified every division in the state to freeze the very rules it had gazetted three weeks earlier.