Daily Bhaskar: New Delhi:
Sunday, September 29, 2013.
After
censuring the government’s ordinance in favour of convicted lawmakers forcing
the ruling UPA to reconsider the matter, Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi
is likely to appeal to Union Cabinet to let Central Information Commission’s
(CIC) verdict which sought to bring political parties under the RTI scanner
prevail. Following the landmark verdict, the government had proposed an
amendment to the RTI Act which would keep out political parties from the RTI
scanner.
At present,
the amended bill is awaiting a nod from Parliamentary Standing Committee, an
approval it is likely to get unless Rahul does something as dramatic as he did
on Friday.
And Congress
leaders think that the probable PM candidate of Congress has already taken up
the issue.
"This
was not a hit-and-run cameo. This was only a prelude to several actions that he
plans to take on the issue of probity and transparency," a Congress leader
considered close to Rahul was quoted as saying by Times of India.
The leader
expressed confidence that Rahul would ‘lean on the party to reverse its
resistance to the order of the Central Information Commission to bring
political parties within the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act’.
He further
revealed to the English daily that the apparent delay in clearing the amended
bill by the Standing Committee was because of ‘nudge’ from Rahul Gandhi.
“He would
like to build on the initiative by asking the party to back off from its
anti-transparency posture as part of a larger plan to lighten the handicap that
the party has accumulated because of the soft-on-corruption perception,” TOI
quoted the leader as telling.
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