Look who is scared of RTI now
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: 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.