Times of India: New Delhi: Friday, October 25, 2013.
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| Wajahat Habibullah, Anjali Bhardwaj, Nikhil Dey and Aruna Roy at an RTI seminar in Delhi on Thursday |
Should political parties be under the ambit of the
Right to Information Act? It is a topic that has been steadily simmering in
public discourse for a while. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that panelists
at TOI’s RTI seminar, who were discussing this topic, had the rapt attention of
the audience. Among the speakers were the country’s leading RTI activists Aruna
Roy, Anjali Bhardwaj and Nikhil Dey along with former chief information
commissioner Wajahat Habibullah.
Nikhil Dey set the tone of the discussion by
pointing out that political parties can’t escape accountability by saying
they’re different from the government. “If RTI can apply to government, how can
it then not apply to political parties who form the government?” He added that
politicians also know that if they oppose coming under RTI’s purview, they
would be on the wrong side of history. “No politician says publicly that there
should not be transparency although privately many want to scuttle this move.”
Anjali Bhardwaj, while listing out the principal
objections raised by political parties, said many of their concerns were
unfounded and those that were genuine could be addressed under the existing
provisions of the RTI Act. “They say it wasn’t the original intention of the
law to cover political parties. Our contention is that wherever public
resources are being used, we have to have information about their funding. Not
just financial matters, people also have a right to know how a party has
selected its candidates.”
She added that parties cannot claim exemption from
RTI on the plea that they were already accountable under different laws.
“Existing laws don’t give all the information that people ought to have. An
example is the details of amounts less than Rs 20,000 which are not required to
be disclosed but form the bulk of the funding of political parties.” As for
politicians’ contention that their competitive position vis-à-vis their
political rivals could be hurt if information was disclosed, Bhardwaj argued
that Section 8 of the RTI Act had a provision for this. “Section 8 of the Act
says that any information that would adversely affect the privacy of an
individual or their competitive position should not be given. This would apply
to political parties as well.”
Habibullah added that there was no reason why
political parties should be afraid of RTI. “On the contrary, it is a good means
to regulate information and help them build public confidence in their
activities.” The former CIC also lauded the RTI Act as being a unique one.
“This is a law that has come up from the bottom. It’s not been initiated by the
political class It’s come from the people. It should now not be compromised by
nit picking and random exclusions.”
The last word on the topic was by Aruna Roy. “Why
do we want information on political parties to be in the public domain?” she
asked. “The reason is because money controls. No funding of any political party
can be without some commitment to those who are providing the funds. Politics
today is not separate from eco nomics. If we don’t know who funds, we’ll never
know who con trols.” She exhorted everyone in the audience to become agents of
change. “Every citizen should send a message to parliamentar ians so that they
know that people want transparency and account ability. Hamara paisa, hamara
hisaab.”