Deccan Herald: Bangalore: Saturday, June 02, 2018.
It is
unfortunate that the Election Commission has resorted to a flip flop on the
issue of whether political parties come under the purview of the Right to
Information (RTI) Act. The commission first said that the RTI Act did not apply
to political parties, contradicting a Central Information Commission (CIC)
order of June 2013, which brought six national parties within the scope of the
transparency law. Immediately after making this controversial statement, the
commission corrected itself and said that national parties are public
authorities for the purposes of the RTI Act. A facile contradiction within a
day of its own statement on such an important issue is not expected from an
institution like the EC. The commission’s first order came in response to a
petition filed by an activist seeking details of the donations collected by six
national parties through electoral bonds. The EC refused to part with the
details, just as the parties had refused to do.
It is the CIC
that has the authority to decide whether a party is a public authority coming
under the RTI Act or not. The EC could not have held a different view on the
matter. It showed the lack of a sense of responsibility and seriousness, or a conscious
attempt to misrepresent the position or to mislead the public. But, will it now
ensure that political parties release the details of their funding, now that it
has accepted that national parties are within the purview of the RTI law? We
know now, thanks to the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, that the
national parties received a whopping Rs 711 crore from “unknown sources” in
2016-17. The distinction between national parties and regional parties in this matter
is also not tenable. It is actually a distinction without a difference because
a regional party can, within the span of a few months, become a national party
and a national party can be reduced to a regional one. The CIC’s view on this
is questionable and, hopefully, the issue will be settled by the Supreme Court,
which is seized of the matter.
Electoral
bonds have deepened the opaqueness of political funding. The Narendra Modi
government introduced them as part of the Union Budget last year. They
guarantee complete anonymity to the donor. Moreover, a company can donate any amount
to a party as the earlier limit of 7.5% of a company’s profits has now been
scrapped. The bonds, which were put on sale by the State Bank of India in March
this year, drew a good response. That shows that parties are getting a lot of
donations. But they are not willing to disclose the amounts or the sources of
funds. The EC must look into this matter in the interest of free and fair
elections and in the national interest.
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