Business Standard: Washington:
Wednesday, August 07, 2013.
Volunteers
and Friends of Aam Aadmi Party in the United States, Singapore and Australia
organised protests during the weekend against the planned amendment to the
Right to Information (RTI) Act in the upcoming parliament session.
The protests
were planned to show the strong public demand for transparency in political
parties as well as the anger against the any amendments to the act by vested
interests.
Protesters
gathered in front of the Indian Embassy in Washington DC and raised slogans
such as "Hands off our Right to Information" and "Why are you
afraid of RTI?" against the union cabinet's approval for an amendment to
the RTI act last Thursday.
They
expressed outrage over how many of the leading national parties, including the
Congress and BJP, are united to scuttle this cornerstone order given by the
Chief Information Commissioner to bring transparency in the functioning of
political parties.
The main
demands of the group to all parties was to not make any amendments to the RTI
act and respect the order by immediately appointing public information officers
in their party.
"Political
parties play a very important and intrinsic role in our democracy and by all
measures are public authorities. We fully support and appreciate the CIC's
order and will fight until political parties implement the order" said
Madhusudan Narasiah from Boston and Akshay Anugu from Florida who were in town
as part of 'Swaraj Yatra', a 210 mile walk from DC to NYC, organized to promote
decentralization of power and transparency in governance.
Somu Kumar, a
volunteer of AAP and resident of DC said: "Law Minister Kapil Sibal on
Friday mentioned that if this order is implemented, it will strike at the root
of the political system. Indeed, it will strike the root but of the existing
'corrupt' political system and hence we are demanding its implementation. He
also said that all parties are unanimously opposed to the CIC order, which is
incorrect as Aam Aadmi Party has come out strongly in favor of the political
parties implementing RTI. The party is leading by example by implementing the
act even before the order was passed".
Namita
Pandey, organizer of this protest and a state convention in Melbourne said:
"We need more transparency in political transactions and not less. Hope
government would listen to voice of people and act as representatives of people
and not as custodians of their party high command."
She added
that protesters have pledged to continue creating awareness among the NRI
communities and gather support to fend off the current and any future
amendments to this act.
"In
current scenario many political parties made our democracy 'Government of the
Neta, by the Neta, for the Neta'. To bring the real democracy i.e. 'Government
of the People, by the People, for the People', all political parties must come
under RTI and accountable to all people" said Rajiv Ratn Shah, one of the
organizers of the meeting in Singapore to show support to CIC decision and
garner more support for the petition against the amendment.
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