Special Police Establishment v. Kamta Prasad Mishra (2026): why a corruption-investigating body is not exempt from the RTI Act

Does an agency become an "intelligence and security" organisation simply because it conducts investigations? In Special Police Establishment v. Kamta Prasad Mishra, decided on 15 June 2026, a Bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Atul S. Chandurkar (who authored the judgment) answered no — and in doing so read a real content requirement back into a provision of the Right to Information Act, 2005 that had been used to place an entire anti-corruption agency beyond the reach of the transparency law.

How the dispute arose

The first respondent, Kamta Prasad Mishra, was a Town Inspector at Police Station Madhav Nagar, Katni. He was caught in a trap case by the Special Police Establishment (SPE), Bhopal, and a First Information Report was registered against him on 11 April 2017 under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. The Home Department granted sanction for his prosecution on 20 May 2020.

Wanting to know how that sanction decision had been taken, Mishra filed an application under Section 6(1) of the Right to Information Act on 1 July 2020, seeking information about the decision-making process and the Lokayukt's responses to his queries. His request was refused, and the State Information Commission rejected his appeal on 16 December 2020, holding that Section 8(1)(h) of the RTI Act — which exempts information that "would impede the process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders" — barred disclosure. The High Court of Madhya Pradesh disagreed: by judgment dated 20 December 2021 in Writ Petition No. 1575 of 2021, it found that the investigation was complete and that Section 8(1)(h) could not be invoked to withhold the information, and directed the SPE to supply it. The SPE's appeal to the Supreme Court is what produced this judgment.

The exemption notification and the question it forced

Before the Supreme Court, the SPE pressed a further point that had received little attention below: a notification dated 25 August 2011, issued by the State's General Administration Department under Section 24(4) of the RTI Act, exempting the "Madhya Pradesh Special Police Establishment of Lokayukta Organization" (and the State Bureau of Investigation of Economic Offences) from the Act. If the RTI Act simply did not apply to the SPE, the argument ran, no disclosure could be ordered at all.

That argument put the notification's validity squarely in issue. Section 24(1) exempts the "intelligence and security organisations" of the Central Government listed in the Second Schedule; Section 24(4) lets a State Government, by gazette notification, extend the same exemption to its "intelligence and security organisations." The Court's textual anchor was the phrase itself. As the judgment put it, the expression "intelligence and security organisations" indicates that a body claiming the exemption "ought to be empowered to go into aspects of 'intelligence' and 'security'." Investigating offences is not the same thing.

What Section 24(4) actually protects

To give the phrase content, the Court examined the twenty-six-odd Central bodies listed in the Second Schedule. The Directorate of Enforcement collects and disseminates intelligence on foreign-exchange law; the Central Reserve Police Force and Border Security Force are armed forces concerned with internal security and border security; the Central Industrial Security Force protects industrial undertakings; and the National Investigation Agency investigates offences "affecting the sovereignty, security and integrity of India." These are organisations "specifically concerned with 'intelligence' and 'security'."

The SPE is a different creature. Constituted under Section 2(1) of the Madhya Pradesh Special Police Establishment Act, 1947, its remit — traced by the Court through successive notifications up to that of 3 May 2001 — is confined to offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and Sections 409, 420 and Chapter XVIII of the Penal Code, committed by public servants. It assists the Lokayukt, whose jurisdiction under Section 7 of the Madhya Pradesh Lokayukt Evam Up-Lokayukt Adhiniyam, 1981 is limited to enquiring into "allegations" of corruption, abuse of position and disproportionate assets against public servants. The Lokayukt's own website describes it as an organisation to "prevent/check corruption," and Section 63 of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 confirms that a State Lokayukta exists "to deal with complaints relating to corruption."

The State's argument from "institutional parity" — that the exemption was calibrated to match the Second Schedule bodies — collapsed once the mismatch in function was exposed. A body with jurisdiction "clearly limited" to corruption offences is not, the Court held, empowered to investigate anything touching intelligence or security. The Court noted that the Allahabad High Court had reached the same conclusion about the U.P. Lokayukt in Dr. Nutan Thakur v. State of U.P. (2017), striking down a comparable exemption notification.

The second holding: testing vires without a pleaded challenge

The State had a procedural objection with real force: Mishra never challenged the 2011 notification in his writ petition, and there were no pleadings on the point. Relying on Union of India v. Manjurani Routray (2023 INSC 787) — a decision to which Justice Maheshwari had himself been a party — the State argued that a subordinate instrument cannot be struck down absent a specific pleaded challenge that gives the other side an opportunity to defend it.

The Court accepted the principle but held it did not bite here. Two recent authorities framed the exception. In Bihar Rajya Dafadar Chaukidar Panchayat (Magadh Division) v. State of Bihar (2025), the Court had recognised that constitutional courts possess a plenary, if sparingly used, power to declare subordinate legislation invalid suo motu — "rarely and in cases which stand out from the ordinary" — provided the State is given a full opportunity to defend it. And in Bharathidasan University v. AICTE (2001 INSC 454), the Court held that where a party in sufferance is a respondent, the absence of a specific prayer to strike down a regulation "cannot confer any further sanctity" on an instrument that patently lacks authority.

This reconciles the two lines of authority. Manjurani Routray bars a court from springing a vires finding on a party that had no chance to defend the instrument. Where, by contrast, the instrument is thrust into the case by the party relying on it and the State is fully heard, the pleading objection falls away.

What was struck down — and what survives

The Court dismissed the SPE's appeal and upheld the High Court's disclosure direction. It struck down the notification dated 25 August 2011 to the extent that it exempts the SPE from the RTI Act, holding that it "does not conform to Section 24(4)" and is "excessive in nature" because it provides for matters not enumerated under Section 7 of the Act of 1947.

Two limits are worth noting. First, the strike-down is confined to the SPE: the Court expressly clarified that it had not examined the notification's application to the State Bureau of Investigation of Economic Offences, which "shall continue to operate to that extent." Second, an independent statutory safeguard reinforces the result — the first proviso to Section 24(4) already carves out "information pertaining to the allegations of corruption and human rights violations" from any exemption, so even a valid notification could not have shielded corruption-related information.

Why it matters

The judgment closes a route by which States could immunise anti-corruption machinery from the RTI Act simply by labelling it a security body. The label must match the function: only organisations genuinely "empowered to go into aspects of 'intelligence' and 'security'" qualify under Section 24(4). For litigants, the second holding is equally practical — a party who brandishes a subordinate instrument to defeat a claim exposes that instrument to scrutiny, and cannot later shelter behind the absence of a formal pleaded challenge.

Related on Valkya

• RBI v. Jayantilal Mistry: RTI, fiduciary privilege, and bank inspection reports
• Income Tax Officer & CPIO v. Gulsanober: RTI section 8(1)(j) and a spouse's tax returns
• PUCL v. Union of India: the voter's right to information

Sources

• Supreme Court of India, Special Police Establishment v. Kamta Prasad Mishra & Ors., 2026 INSC 644 (Judgment dated 15 June 2026)