Hindustan Times: New
Delhi: Sunday, September 29, 2013.
The
government wants to keep political parties out of the purview of the right to
information law to prevent politicians from using the information law
"with malicious intentions", according to the Cabinet note on the proposed
amendment placed in public domain on Friday
evening.
This the
first time that a Cabinet note has been put made public, a move in line with a
2012 Central Information Commission decision in an appeal filed by HT and
Minister of State V Narayanasamy’s directions to proactively put out
information .
The
Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) placed the Cabinet note on its
website on Friday evening even as the UPA government battled criticism over its
anxiety to reverse the Supreme Court bar on lawmakers to continue in office
after conviction in criminal cases.
“It is a
welcome step towards transparency... Other departments too need to emulate this
initiative,” RTI activist Lokesh Batra said. All cabinet notes are classified
as secret documents, irrespective of how innocuous the note is.
In a departure
from past practice, former information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi had ruled
last year that cabinet notes could be released under the information law once
the bill is introduced in Parliament.
The
government introduced the RTI (Amendment) Bill during Parliament’s Monsoon
session but was forced to refer the proposal to the parliamentary standing
committee.
The amendment
to the Right to Information Act was the first verdict that the government was
trying to overturn.
The Central
Information Commission had ruled on 3 June that political parties were public
authorities under the RTI Act and thus, needed to appoint information officers
to respond to queries under this law.
Less than a
month later, according to the note, the DoPT first proposed promulgating an
ordinance to nullify the CIC decision. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved
the ordinance on 9 July but it was later decided to place the proposal before
Parliament instead.
The note also
reveals that the government reformulated the amendment after the legislative
department pointed that the provision “suggested by the Department of Legal
Affairs would confine only to the 52 recognized (National/State parties) out of
1,444 political parties registered with the Election Commission as on 18 January 2013.”
“This will bring in an incongruous situation,
which could be avoided by adding the Explanation covering all the political
parties registered with the Election Commission,” the legislative department
said in its opinion.
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