E-Pao.net: Imphal: Saturday, August 02, 2014.
In a
departure from its earlier stance, nay, a complete U-turn, the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government at the Centre has
contended that bringing political parties under the ambit of Right to
Information (RTI) Act would hamper the smooth functioning of parties and the
information could be misused by opponents.
In a written
reply to the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, Minister of State for Personnel and
Training Jitendra Singh said, “Declaring a political party as public authority
under the RTI Act would hamper its smooth internal working, which is not the
objective of the RTI Act.
Further,
political rivals may misuse the provisions of the Act, thereby adversely
affecting the functioning of the political parties.”
Interestingly,
BJP is the party which claimed that it was in favour of greater transparency in
the financial dealings of all political parties while the then ruling Congress,
Left and others insisted that political parties cannot be brought under the
purview of RTI Act when the Central Information Commission (CIC) issued an
order in June last year seeking to bring six national parties namely Congress,
BJP, CPI-M, CPI, NCP and BSP that fulfill the criteria of being ‘public
authorities’ under RTI.
Of course,
BJP did initially back a law to overrule the CIC order but later on it went on
to make tall claim that it had no issues in being under the ambit of the
transparency law.
Now, the
question is; why the political parties including BJP are afraid of RTI Act if
they are not including in illegal money laundering or corrupt financial
practices?
When RTI Act
is applicable to the government, why should the political parties, which form
the government, be excluded from the purview of the same Act?
If there is
rule of law in the country and everyone is treated equally in the eyes of law,
then why the political parties and politicians should be placed above the same
law?
These are
some of the questions that the political parties including BJP, which has come
out openly to admonish the idea of bringing political parties under RTI, need
to answer to justify their claims that RTI Act is not applicable to the
political parties and their smooth functioning would be affected if they were
brought under the ambit of RTI.
The order of
the CIC, which had come at a time when people have started losing their faith
in Indian democracy with concepts like ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’
reduced to some high sounding slogans for the politicians to mouth at public
platforms, only meant that political parties are answerable to citizens of the
country.
So, if the
political parties are actually concerned about maintaining the sanctity of
democratic institutions in the country, then they need to look beyond their
party finances as without the support of the people, there is no importance or
relevance for any political party.
Well, after
coming into power, BJP has been charged with taking a U-turn on almost every
issue, but this latest U-turn on RTI is, perhaps, the worst one as this has
made it no different from other RTI-scared political parties.
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