Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Well done, ADR and CIC' that was published in Newsband

Well done, ADR and CIC

The decision of the Central Information Commission that ‘political parties come under the ambit of the Right To Information Act’ is quite welcome.

The right to information is a part of the fundamental right to free expression. This Act even makes it possible to place the assets of its judges in the public domain. It might be a harder battle to bring political parties to account

In the past, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has weighed in on the side of privacy in the RTI debate, arguing that the law in practice had become too intrusive. Significantly, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) which petitioned the CIC on bringing political parties under the RTI Act, has made the opposite case: that lack of scrutiny had led to parties being able to accumulate unexplained wealth running into hundreds of crores of rupees.

The ADR argued that political parties must be treated as public authorities because they receive substantial government support in the form of free air time on Doordarshan and All India Radio during elections, discounted rents for party offices and large income-tax exemptions. The organisation calculated that government subsidies for the two largest parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, alone amounted to Rs. 255 crore.

Despite the official largesse, political parties insisted that they were not public authorities and managed not to reveal the source for a large part of their incomes by showing them as small voluntary donations exempt from disclosure.

Yet, thanks to the RTI being harnessed for unearthing scams, the government has found itself debunking a law that is its own creation. With the CIC’s ruling, the political class is bound to unite against a law that has been hugely empowering for the common person.

RTI is a weapon that gives power to the common man to know the underlying truth regarding the finances of the political parties. The political parties are not ready to welcome the ambit of RTI because they themselves know that they are corrupt. Each party wants to govern so that they can collect more and more fund in the name of public welfare but their motive is to fill their own treasure box.

The UPA gave birth to RTI.  CIC and ADR are now demanding that the

political parties too be brought under its ambit, thereby advocating high level of transparency in an effort to undermine corruption and develop a system of fair governance.

The political parties opposing the aforesaid move doesn’t come as a shock, given the large amounts of black money amassed by them, and the fact that their enthusiasm to run the country is to fulfill their own interests. The CIC's mechanism, if put in place, will reveal the true picture of governance at every level and expose deep-rooted corruption. This decision of the CIC has the potential to bring concrete data about political-bureaucratic-corporate nexus in the public domain.

If the political parties create problems in its implementation, then they should be stripped of the privileges like tax exemptions, low-rent accommodations and free air time.