23 September 2012

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Indian Political Parties say will not give information regarding donations under right to information act except one

Indian Political Parties say will not give information regarding donations under right to information act except one

the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), asked the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
the Indian National Congress (INC),
the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP),
the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP),
the Communist Party of India (CPI)
the Communist Party of India (Marxist) under the RTI Act about their largest donors, matter of donations and their addresses.

all political parties except the Communist Party of India (CPI), refused to declare their largest donors and the manner of donations in public, claiming they are not a “public authority” and thereby do not come under the Right to Information Act 2005.

When ADR received such replies from political parties ADR filed a complaint in CIC.
a complaint with the Central Information Commission (CIC) in March 2011 to direct the political parties to give this information.
This complaint has now come up for hearing before the full bench of the CIC along with another complaint of Subhash Agarwal, an RTI activist, on September 26.

The question would soon come before the Central Information Commission, which has constituted a full bench comprising Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra and information commissioners Anna-purna Dixit and M.L. Sharma to probe the issue.

Political parties have repeatedly refused to provide information to RTI applicants claiming that they are not public authorities defined under the transparency law hence are not required to set up infrastructure for processing the applications under it or replying to such queries.

Following the refusal, RTI activist Subhash Agrawal and Anil Bairwal of Association for Democratic Reforms filed the complaint against political parties before the Central Information Commission.

The transparency panel has issued notices to Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, Bhartiya Janata Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, CPI(M), CPI and Election Commission of India to present themselves through their representative before the Commission on September 26, 2012.

“Some of the political parties in their replies to the complainants have claimed that they are not a public authority and as such they are not covered under the RTI Act.

 Since the issues involved are serious and the decision in these cases can have wider implications, the Commission has decided to place these cases before a Full Bench...,” the notice said.

In his complaint, Mr. Agrawal had argued that political parties get cheap land by the Union Government, which is a kind of substantial financing by the Government.

“In view of land being made at highly subsidized crates by the Union government, many other facilities at the cost of Union and state governments and other public authorities and regular and election-time facilities provided by Election Commission of India, political parties are to be covered under section 2(h) of RTI Act,” he said.

Once again this shows that Indian political parties are business houses and they are not here to do any type of social service.

Suggested Regarding –

Many parties claim they don’t come under RTI Act; CPI responds positively


Reality views by sm –

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Tags – Political Parties RTI

10 comments:

Shaw September 23, 2012  

transparency is an issue everywhere to a degree, but it seems really bad in India

Arti September 23, 2012  

Completely with the comment above me. The situation is worse in India.

Alex September 23, 2012  

It's really sad when you think that all over the world you instead of being the people demanding from the government is the other way around

Destination Infinity September 23, 2012  

Transparency helps everyone, including the political parties. If they are transparent they will not come under unnecessary risk and corporate domination.

Destination Infinity

Bart September 23, 2012  

those scoundrels!!!