Dear friends,

Recently we witnessed a rarest of rare incident – all political parties in India agreeing on one subject, the necessity of political parties to be excluded from the purview of Right to Information Act.  Only in the case of hike of salary and perks of Members of Parliament such rare unity had been witnessed in the past.

The all party meeting unanimously approved government stand that political parties are not public authorities and so do not come under RTI Act. The cabinet already gave its nod to keep political parties out of the RTI Act by approving changes in the law to overturn the central information panel’s ruling on the issue.

The proposed amendment, to be placed before Parliament, states that the definition of public authority shall not include any political party registered under the Representation of People’s Act and no litigation related to this shall be entertained by any court of law.

“Declaring political parties as public authorities under the Right to Information Act would hamper their smooth internal functioning since it will encourage political rivals to file RTI applications with malicious intentions,” stated the government’s note seeking an amendment in the law.

The Truth is crystal clear to those citizens who try to understand the political significance of the decision.

We all know that the coffers of political parties are filled liberally by the black money of the Industrialists and Corporate houses. The Congress and BJP are the main beneficiaries. The others also get their deserving share. Comparatively left parties get nominal share of this booty. So I fail to understand why they also object the decision of the Central Information Panel. The fear of the political parties is that once they come under RTI Act the details of the donation will have to be publicly revealed and this may lead to the drying up of this unlimited source of black money. For the coming Lok Sabha election BJP will get more corporate money than the Congress since they will be more than eager to bet more money on the new race horse, their darling Narendra Modi.

As long as the people remain mere spectators, the political parties will do whatever they like.

Regards,

Joy Paul Puthussery