The Constitution gives every citizen a right of access to information, then hands the whole of it to statute. Five statutes now carry it. What a request must say, how long a body has, and what to do when nobody answers.
Most people never ask the state anything, assuming an answer would be a favour. It is not. Since 2010 the Constitution has carried a right of access to information, and since 2013 statutes have turned it into a procedure with a form, a clock and an appeal. A request under one of them is neither petition nor complaint. It is an instrument with a deadline, and the deadline runs whether or not anyone intends to reply.
The Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Act, 2010 inserted Article 19A into the chapter on fundamental rights. It is one sentence: "Every citizen shall have the right to have access to information in all matters of public importance subject to regulation and reasonable restrictions imposed by law." Both halves do work. The first creates the right and confines it to matters of public importance. The second hands its design to legislatures. The Article alone tells nobody where to write or when to expect a reply. It is a direction, not a route, and becomes usable only once a legislature builds the procedure.
There is no single national law, and the choice has nothing to do with where the applicant lives. It turns on which government controls the body asked. A federal ministry, regulator or body created by federal law is reached under the Right of Access to Information Act, 2017 (Act XXXIV of 2017, assented 12 October 2017), which replaced the Freedom of Information Ordinance of 2002. A provincial department, board or district office is reached under its own province's Act.
Those are the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act, 2013, assented 14 December 2013; the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Right to Information Act, 2013 (Act XXVII of 2013), passed 31 October 2013 and since amended; the Sindh Transparency and Right to Information Act, 2016, which despite its title was passed on 13 March 2017; and the Baluchistan Right to Information Act, 2021 (Act II of 2021), assented 15 February 2021, repealing that province's Freedom of Information Act of 2005. All five are in force, and their differences are what costs people their requests.
Section 2 of the federal Act draws the term public body wide: ministries and their attached offices, authorities created by federal law, the secretariats of both houses, statutory corporations, bodies substantially financed by the federal government, courts and tribunals constituted under federal law, and any organisation performing a public function, to the extent of that function. The clause people miss is the last: an organisation that has taken public funds, a subsidy, a tax exemption or land is a public body to that extent. Only the outer edge is disputed. Writing in Dawn on 17 September 2023, Syed Raza Ali recorded that bodies created by the Constitution itself have resisted disclosure, arguing the Act does not reach them at all.
Section 11 sets a deliberately low bar. The request must be in writing and may arrive by any means the body can receive: in person, by post, online or by email. It must describe the information well enough to be found, and carry an address. Section 11(5) is worth memorising: "In no case shall an applicant be required to provide reasons for his request." Balochistan is the outlier, where a request must also carry the applicant's identity card and reasons. On the receiving side sits a named office: section 9 requires each public body to notify a designated official not below BPS-19, and section 13(4) makes a refusal conditional on the written approval of the principal officer.
Federally: ten working days, extendable by ten where the request needs a search through many records, records in several offices, or consultation with a third party. Three working days where life or liberty is involved. If the body holds nothing, it must say so within ten. The provinces set their own clocks, and the table below has them.
Refusal has two sources. Section 7 puts some records outside the Act altogether: notings and intermediate opinions until a final decision is taken, bank customer records, defence records other than commercial and welfare activity, privacy records, documents supplied in confidence, and records the minister-in-charge classifies for recorded reasons — a power that expressly cannot cover allegations of corruption or violations of human rights. Section 16 lists the exemptions for information a body does hold, from international relations and the detection of crime to commercial interests and legal privilege. A refusal must name the exact exception relied on. Section 16 also carries an expiry clause: the exemptions "shall cease to apply after every twenty years and that record of public bodies shall be made public."
A refusal has to name the clause it stands on. A refusal that names nothing is not a refusal. It is a silence with a letterhead.
This is the provision the system turns on, and most people do not know it is there. Under section 17 an applicant may appeal to the Information Commission within thirty days of a decision or of the time limit for that decision passing. Non-response is not a dead end. It is a trigger. The appeal is free, and the Commission must decide within sixty days. Section 17(4) reverses the ordinary burden: the public body must prove it acted in accordance with the Act. The citizen does not prove entitlement. The body proves that refusal was lawful.
| Jurisdiction | Statute | Time to respond | Appeal lies to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal | Right of Access to Information Act, 2017 | 10 working days, +10; 3 for life or liberty | Pakistan Information Commission |
| Punjab | Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act, 2013 | 14 working days, +14; 2 for life or liberty | Punjab Information Commission |
| Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Right to Information Act, 2013 | 10 working days, +10; 2 for life or liberty | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Commission |
| Sindh | Sindh Transparency and Right to Information Act, 2016 | 15 working days, +10 on notice | Sindh Information Commission |
| Balochistan | Baluchistan Right to Information Act, 2021 | 15 working days, +15 | Balochistan Information Commission |
Section 20 gives the federal Commission the powers of a civil court to summon witnesses and compel evidence, to require production of the record, to order disclosure, and to fine an obstructing official one day's salary for each day of obstruction, up to a hundred days. Non-compliance with such an order, if not appealed within thirty days, may be treated as contempt of court. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's commission may fine 250 rupees a day up to 25,000; Punjab's up to fifty thousand.
The limits matter more. A commission cannot create a record that was never made, and cannot reach a body outside its jurisdiction. Its orders can be challenged in the high courts, and are: the same 2023 Dawn analysis records seventy-three orders of the Pakistan Information Commission under challenge, which is how a disclosure regime is slowed without repeal. And a commission has to exist first. Sindh's Act required one within a hundred days; it arrived in June 2022. Balochistan's required one within a hundred and twenty; Dawn reported on 18 August 2024 that three years on it had not been formed, and the state news agency reported it opening a temporary office on 28 August 2025. When the Free and Fair Election Network tested thirty-three federal ministries in 2024, fourteen never replied at all. The law is built for that, which is why the appeal is free and the burden reversed.
None of this needs a lawyer, a contact or a reason. It needs knowing the deadline exists and being willing to count to ten. A right exercised also leaves a record of its own: every appeal decided is a public document about what a body held and why it would not hand it over.