Times
of India: New Delhi: Friday, 21 November 2014.
The central
information commission (CIC) on Friday will seek responses from the six
national political parties on complaints of non-compliance of its order that
they come within the ambit of RTI Act.
The
non-compliance notice comes 17 months after blatant violation of the
commission's order that recognized all political parties as public authorities
and directed them to put in place mechanisms to address RTI queries. The issue
gains urgency with a bill exempting political parties from RTI pending before
Parliament.
On June 3,
2013 CIC had declared Congress, BJP, CPI, CPM, NCP and BSP as public
authorities answerable under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and given them
six weeks to comply with the mandatory requirements under the law for the
processing of information seeking applications. But none of the political
parties followed the directives of the quasi-judicial body.
Following the
non-compliance activists Subhash Agrawal, R K Jain and NGO Association for
Democratic Reforms filed complaints with the CIC.
"It's
been more than 17 months since the CIC's order and till now none of the six
political parties has complied with the CIC's order ... This is a clear case of
open defiance of a statutory authority by the six political parties and is not
conducive to the functioning of a democratic society," ADR said in a
statement.
It further
said that this non-compliance has a "very serious detrimental effect on
the state of democracy in the country at large".
A bench of
Vijai Sharma, Manjula Parashar and Sharat Sabharwal will hear the complaint.
The
complainants said the non-compliance has created an impression in the minds of
the people that the rule of law exists only for common persons, and all
institutions and people who enjoy some authority, formal or informal, and
political parties in particular, are above the law.
"If
political parties and Union government were not agreeable to CIC-verdict, they
should have challenged the CIC-verdict in court. Even legislation to amend RTI
Act for the purpose was deferred despite parliamentary committee's
recommendations perhaps because the then attorney general opined against such
legislation," Agrawal said.
While
declaring the political parties answerable to public under the RTI Act, CIC,
had held that they have been substantially financed by the central government
bringing them under the RTI Act.