All the six major political parties have ignored the CIC order to appoint designate information officers and appellate authorities even as the six-week deadline of the information watchdog ended on Monday.
Though CPI is also against the CIC order for bringing political parties under the RTI ambit, it became the first party to respond to a query under the legislation.
The CPI provided information about its funding but rejected giving out the details on its deliberations and agendas of its meetings besides their outcome.
According to the details provided to noted RTI activist Subhash Agarwal, the CPI said its central office had received more than Rs3 crore in past five years. The party also provided all the receipts above Rs20,000.
“The political parties are independent autonomous and voluntary organisations. It is an insult to political parties to say that we run our parties with substantial help from the Gover
nment. We are not Her Majesty’s opposition’. We are a free party,” said CPI in the RTI reply signed by its General Secretary S Sudhakar Reddy. It reiterated that political parties were not at all public authorities under the definition of RTI.
Seeking to bring them under RTI purview, Commission had in its June 3 order said six national parties — Congress, BJP, NCP, CPI-M, CPI and BSP — have been substantially funded indirectly by the Central Government and they have the character of public authority under RTI Act as they perform public functions.
“Office sites are not outright sale to our party. It is a lease though we wanted to purchase it. The market value at the time of lease was much less. It is meaningless to show the present market value. It does not make sense,” said CPI to the query of the market value of its central office Ajoy Bhawan.
“We are also of the confirmed opinion that there should be Right to privacy and confidentiality of party’s internal discussions and decisions and those of the non-party ones can not have any right to peep in these things…..We have not appointed any information officer. We elect our office-bearers according to our party constitution at all levels of our party organisation. However, we reply to your enquiries,” said CPI, providing its details of funding.
“CPI should be complimented to become first and the only political party for disclosing funding made to it by various sources when query was made to the party through an RTI petition,” said Agarwal, who sent queries to other five parties Congress, BJP, CPI(M), NCP and BSP, which did not respond.
Cong, Govt not on same page
The Congress and the Government spoke in different voices on Monday over the issue of bringing political parties under RTI.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari said that there is no plan to bring political parties under RTI as the CIC decision to appoint public information officers is misconceived. His party colleague Ajay Maken, however, said that all legal provisions will be complied with as the party does not want to demean RTI.
“If you read the RTI Act, if you go back to the debate which led to its conceptualisation, if the intent was to bring political parties under it, that would have been stated,” Tewari said.
“And the law doesn’t allow you to do something indirectly which cannot be done directly and that’s why we have said very respectfully that the CIC’s order is misconceived and fails on the fundamental appreciation of the law,” he said.
But Maken said, “All legal provisions of the RTI will be complied with. We donot want to demean RTI Act, which has been enacted by the Congress-led UPA Government.”
The law Ministry has cleared the Ordinance route to amend the RTI Act to overturn the CIC order bringing the parties under the ambit of the transparency law.