Right to Information activists on Wednesday said that hundreds of records of their previous applications have disappeared from an online government portal, The Hindu reported.

The records are said to have disappeared from the RTI Online portal, through which citizens can file applications to access information from the Union government. Applications can be filed on the portal to seek information on Central ministries, departments, subsidiary institutions, regulators, the country’s foreign missions and governments of certain Union Territories.

The portal was launched in 2013 and is run by the National Informatics Centre.

An RTI activist from Madhya Pradesh, Chandra Shekhar Gaur, said there was a mismatch running into several hundreds in his RTI Online account.

Digital rights activist Srinivas Kodali also confirmed that the records had disappeared, reported The Wire.

“The RTI Online portal was being turned unusual by the government for the past few months with them stopping new registrations and even warning of deleting accounts that are not being used,” he said. “Now, all the RTIs filed prior to 2019 have been deleted from the server.”

Kodali asserted this is as serious as government orders being removed. “There was no official intimation about it to any of the RTI portal users,” he said.

Since its launch in 2013, the RTI Online portal has processed more than 58.3 lakh applications, according to The Hindu. In 2022, over 12.6 lakh applications were filed on the portal.