As political parties emerge to amend the Right To Information (RTI) law seeking to exempt political parties from its ambit, RTI activists lash out at the political unanimity for diluting the transparency law.
RTI activist Subhash Agrawal said that political parties do not support such reforms as this is likely to adversely affect those who use politics as some profession. “Democratic form of governance has now virtually been redefined as a system for the politicians, by the politicians and of the politicians rather than visualised by our constitution-makers to be for the people, by the people and of the people,” he said.
Mr Agrawal says that introducing the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2013, reinforces and confirms the suspicions that the political establishments intends to cover acts of corruption and arbitrary use of power.
“While opposing themselves coming under purview of RTI Act, these political parties said they were accountable to Election Commission and were faithfully following directives of Election Commission. But this is not true. Neither Union government nor political parties have cared to implement poll reforms being suggested by Election Commission now for several decades. Even reformative steps directed by Election Commission like compulsory declaration of wealth and criminal records by candidates were implemented only after Supreme Court directives,” he added further.
The government’s move to amend the RTI Act comes after the Central Information Commission (CIC) in a June 3 order had declared that the six national political parties — Congress, BJP, CPI(M), CPI, NCP and BSP — were public authorities and therefore came under the purview of the RTI Act.
Even as the government insisted that “declaring a political party as public authority under the RTI Act would hamper its smooth internal working,” the “unusual” unanimity amongst political parties to change the law has shocked the RTI crusaders.
Calling it a cowardly act, Mr Agrawal said this itself endorses correctness of well drafted CIC verdict, “There were many hopes when Right To Information was introduced in the country in the year 2005 which was called, and rightly too, as a second freedom to the citizenry.
But when sword of the wonderful legislation reached to our political parties to make them accountable and transparent, our self-centred politicians cutting across party-lines united to undo the historic verdict from Central Information Commission by a shortcut route of clipping wings of transparency Act itself through amendment in the RTI Act,” he further said.
Activists demand that the bill to keep political parties out of purview of RTI Act must be pre-conditioned that the politicians will have to return land and bungalows allotted to them by the government.