New Delhi:
The UPA government is all set to promulgate an ordinance to exempt political parties from the ambit of the Right To Information or RTI Act. The ordinance will make an amendment to the act explicitly excluding political parties from the definition of public authority and will take effect retrospectively from the day of the order of the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC).
The CIC had ruled on June 3 that all political parties are public authorities and directed the President and general secretaries of all political parties to make provisions to implement the act within six weeks' time. This means that political parties would now have to share, if sought, details like who funds them, how they spend that money and even how they select candidates for elections.
The CIC had held that political parties are "public authorities", have a "public character" and are "substantially funded by the government." It said that parties got land and big government-owned bungalows at deep discounts which amounts to getting "financial benefits." As does income tax exemptions granted to parties and free air time on All India Radio and Doordarshan at the time of elections, it held.
All political parties have argued that they are not government funded and are not public authorities and so should not be brought under the RTI Act, which seeks to make transparent all expenditure of public money and other details about public authorities that impact citizens. On record though, the parties say they are open to such scrutiny.
The government argues that it never visualised or considered during the enactment of the act to bring political parties within the ambit of the RTI. They also argue it will hamper the smooth internal functioning and will be used by political rivals maliciously to disturb their functioning.
With this move, the government hopes to negate the CIC orders and most political parties have given their support to amend the RTI Act.