India RTI Portal Usability Report 2026
Where citizens get stuck while filing RTIs online - a state-by-state review of the Central RTI portal and every State/UT filing route, verified manually in June 2026.
Executive summary
India's Right to Information ecosystem is online in name but fragmented in practice. In June 2026, FileMyRTI manually verified the official RTI filing route for the Central Government and all 28 states and 8 Union Territories. The result: a citizen's ability to file an RTI online - and what it costs, how long the text can be, how the fee can be paid, and where an appeal goes - changes dramatically at every state border.
Why portal usability matters
RTI is a statutory right, but exercising it now depends on software. When a portal rejects special characters, silently drops a payment, hides the correct public authority, or requires a login a first-time user cannot complete, the right is effectively delayed or denied. These are not edge cases - they are the most common reasons citizens abandon a filing or turn to assisted services.
Central vs state coverage - the first trap
The Central portal (rtionline.gov.in) accepts applications only for Central public authorities. Most states run their own portals, and several warn that a wrongly-routed application is returned without refund of the fee (Central, Karnataka, Goa, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, among others). Uttar Pradesh additionally excludes its Vidhan Sabha, Vidhan Parishad and the Allahabad High Court / subordinate courts from its portal. The single most common citizen mistake we see is filing a State matter on the Central portal, or vice versa.
State-wise portal availability (June 2026)
| Filing route | Jurisdictions |
|---|---|
| Own online RTI portal | Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, Punjab, Haryana, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Jammu & Kashmir, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, Ladakh |
| Files through the Central portal | Chandigarh (select "UT of Chandigarh" on rtionline.gov.in - the first UT to offer this) |
| No online route - postal only | Manipur, Nagaland, Sikkim (portal unconfirmed), Puducherry, Andaman & Nicobar, Lakshadweep |
Bihar is unique in the other direction: its Jaankari facility accepts RTI applications by phone (155311, fee collected through call charges), alongside a web portal.
The department-not-listed problem
Even where a portal exists, coverage is partial. Gujarat and Tamil Nadu describe phased rollouts; Meghalaya lists around 133 onboarded authorities; J&K and Ladakh tell applicants to file a physical RTI when the authority is not in the portal menu. The citizen is rarely told why an office is missing or when it will be added - and choosing a wrong department to "just proceed" causes returns and transfers.
Fees: a 10x spread, moving in the wrong direction
- Rs. 10 is the norm in most states (and free at village level in Telangana).
- Maharashtra (2026) - the newly notified rules raised the fee to a reported Rs. 30, added a mandatory self-attested photo ID, a single-subject/~150-word cap, and higher appeal fees; parts of the rules are under public/legal challenge.
- Sikkim - official rules prescribe a fee of around Rs. 100 with documentary citizenship proof - ten times the national norm.
- Assam explicitly states the fee is non-refundable even if the application is rejected.
Payment: fragmentation that fails silently
Accepted payment modes vary from full UPI support (UP, J&K, Haryana, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Goa) to Internet-Banking-only (Karnataka, Delhi, Assam, Tripura, Ladakh), to state-specific gateways (Rajasthan's e-Mitra, Kerala's eTreasury, Goa's eChallan, Mizoram's HDFC gateway). The most common failure we document: amount debited, no registration number generated - with reconciliation that can take 24-48 working hours (Central) and no consistent refund communication.
Text-entry limits: 150 words to 10,000 characters
| Limit | Where |
|---|---|
| ~150 words | Karnataka (portal FAQ); Maharashtra (2026 rules, single subject) |
| 500 words | Jharkhand, Uttarakhand |
| 1000 words | Assam |
| 3000 characters | Central, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Kerala, Mizoram, Goa, J&K |
| 10,000 characters | Himachal Pradesh |
Most portals also reject "special characters" - bullets, smart quotes and symbols pasted from word processors - forcing citizens to retype applications in plain text.
Login walls and identity contradictions
Roughly half the portals allow direct filing with no account (Central, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, J&K, Tamil Nadu); the other half require registration or SSO login (Telangana, Haryana, Assam, Himachal, Kerala, Mizoram, Punjab, Rajasthan). Identity rules actively contradict each other: the Central, Karnataka, Kerala and J&K portals tell applicants not to upload Aadhaar/PAN or personal ID, while Maharashtra's 2026 rules mandate a self-attested photo ID with every application.
Appeals: online first appeals, then a wall
First appeals are generally filable online and free. Second appeals are another story: only Goa and Punjab support them online in the same flow; Assam uses a separate SIC portal; Haryana requires manual filing in triplicate; and for J&K, Ladakh, Chandigarh, DNH&DD, Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep, second appeals go to the Central Information Commission - J&K's State Commission was wound up after 2019 and no UT-level commission replaced it.
The offline fallback - and the IPO problem
For the six no-portal jurisdictions and every "department not listed" case, the fallback is a postal RTI with the fee attached as an Indian Postal Order, demand draft or court-fee stamp. In practice, citizens report post offices without IPO stock and confusion over the correct payee (commonly the "Accounts Officer" of the authority). This offline last mile is where a statutory right most often stalls on a Rs. 10 instrument.
Recommendations for citizen-friendly RTI filing
- One national standard: Rs. 10 fee, UPI accepted everywhere, and no fee forfeiture on wrong-jurisdiction filings - route or refund instead.
- No login walls for filing; OTP only where genuinely needed (status view).
- A uniform 3000-character request field with attachment overflow, and plain-text sanitising instead of hard rejection.
- Online first and second appeals in the same flow, with the Goa model as reference.
- A public, machine-readable directory of public authorities and PIOs per state, updated on a published schedule.
- Portal status pages and payment-reconciliation timelines published to citizens.
Methodology
Between 26-28 June 2026, the FileMyRTI team manually verified the official RTI filing route for the Central Government and every state and Union Territory: portal existence and URL, login requirement, fee and payment modes, text limits, jurisdiction warnings, appeal routes and helplines - against each official portal, FAQ or guidelines page. Each finding carries a "last verified" date on the corresponding FileMyRTI portal help page, where sources are noted. Where a fact could not be verified on an official source, this report says so rather than asserting it. Findings also draw on FileMyRTI's operational experience assisting citizens with 50,000+ RTI applications.
Citation: India RTI Portal Usability Report 2026, FileMyRTI (filemyrti.com). Journalists and researchers may reproduce the findings with attribution and a link.
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