India Today: New Delhi: Saturday, June 02, 2018.
The Election
Commission of Indias reported response, to a Right to Information (RTI)
application, stating that political parties are not within the purview of the
RTI created quite a stir. To quote the ECI: The requisite information is not
available [with] the Commission. This is related to political parties and they
are [outside the] purview of the RTI. They may submit information of
donation/amount collected through electoral bonds in their contribution report
for the financial year 2017-18 [to] the ECI, for which the due date is
September 30, 2018.
To put this
baldly, this is contrary to facts. A full bench of the Central Information
Commission (CIC) had said, on June 3, 2018, that six national parties, the BJP,
Congress, BSP, NCP, CPI and CPI(M), are public authorities under the RTI. None
of the political parties has contested this decision in any court, but they
have refused nevertheless to comply with it. The original applicants have
appealed to the Supreme Court, where the matter is pending.
The CIC, set
up under the Right to Information Act, happens to be the final statutory
authority in the country in this regard, and the ECI cannot override its
decision in matters pertaining to the RTI Act. Even if, for the sake of
argument, political parties were not under the RTI Act, and a citizen asked the
ECI for information on political parties, it would be required to deal with
such a request under Section 11 of the RTI Act, which deals with third party
information. This section mandates that information about political parties,
held by the ECI, has to be disclosed in public interest.
On May 28,
2018, the ECI issued the following clarification:
The Election
Commission of India goes by the CIC order of 3rd June 2013 that national
parties are public authorities for the purposes of the RTI Act and in pursuance
of this, all information about contributions received by them as well as their
annual audited accounts, as and when submitted to the Commission, are put in
the public domain.
As regards
consultations with leaders of different political parties before presenting
electoral bonds is concerned, this issue has been transferred to the Ministry
of Finance as it might concern them and not the Election Commission of India.
While this
clarification puts the matter to rest for now, it is clear that the ECI was in
error even if we grant, in light of the later clarification, that it was
inadvertent.
The fact that
electoral bonds find mention in the ECIs missives suggests electoral bonds may
be the real cause of the confusion. That wouldn'tt be surprising given that the
real purpose of introducing electoral bonds was to render opaque the sources of
electoral/ political funding. Ironically, the title of the relevant section of
(then) finance minister Arun Jaitleys Union budget speech, which introduced
electoral bonds, was Transparency in Electoral Funding. In the customary media
interaction after the budget, Jaitley had said: These bonds will be bearer in
character to keep the donor anonymous (emphasis added). How can the same
instrument be both transparent and anonymous? And if electoral bonds can
confuse even a constitutional authority such as the ECI, how can one expect the
common citizen to fare any better?
Just one
example of the deliberate attempt at creating confusion is the claim that the
limit of cash donations to political parties has been reduced from Rs 20,000 to
Rs 2,000; there was no limit on cash donations earlier. Now, a new limit of Rs
2,000 has been set for cash donations while the limit for mandatory disclosure
of donations to the Election Commission remains at Rs 20,000.
So much for
transparency. One hopes that constitutional authorities will exercise greater
care in making their various pronouncements in future.
Jagdeep S.
Chhokar is former Professor, Dean and Director in-charge of IIM, Ahmedabad, and
a founder member of the Association for Democratic Reforms.