The Hindu: Kannur: Friday,
March 14, 2014.
The Communist
Party of India (Marxist) State committee has been sought under the Right to
Information (RTI) Act to provide information on the party-level inquiry into
the murder of the Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) leader T.P.
Chandrasekharan.
In an RTI
application addressed to the ‘State Public Information Officer’ of the CPI(M)
State committee, P. Sharfuddin, a Thalassery-based RTI activist, sought the
information to be provided in 48 hours under section 7(1) of the Act. The
applicant demanded an authorised copy of the inquiry report, details about the
sittings of the inquiry panel, including the number of sittings, and dates and
places of inquiry, names of the members of the panel, authorised copies of the
submissions, if any, of the relatives and friends of Chandrasekharan before the
commission, authorised copies of the submissions of party leaders and
representatives of public authorities who had been heard by the commission
during its inquiry into the murder, and the total expenditure incurred by the
CPI(M) State committee for conducting it.
When
contacted, Mr. Sharfuddin said that as per the Central Information Commission’s
order No. CIC(SM)/C/2011/000838, six political parties, including the CPI(M),
came under the purview of the RTI Act and, therefore, were legally bound to
provide information sought under the RTI Act. No court in the country had
quashed this order.
‘No
Ordinance’
Though the
Central government had earlier planned to promulgate an Ordinance to amend the
Act to keep political parties out of its purview, no such Ordinance was issued.
Since the order was still in force, the political parties should appoint a
Public Information Officer to provide information sought under the RTI Act, he
said.
It remains to
be seen whether the CPI(M) State committee will accept the RTI application for
the inquiry report. The CPI(M) can return the application citing that the party
has no State Public Information Officer. According to RTI activists, the
applicant can then approach the State Information Commission.
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