Political parties are not bechara: Why they should be under RTI ambit

Bechara political parties.

Everyone is out to get them. And so they must be kept out of the ambit of Right to Information Act. The Centre has told the Supreme Court that if political parties are “held to be public authorities, under the RTI Act, it would hamper their smooth working.”

“Smooth” logic indeed.

Unsurprisingly even in India’s logjammed parliament, this is a rare moment of political unity across the board. The BJP, Congress, CPI(M), CPI, NCP and Bahujan Samaj Party were all asked by the Supreme Court in July to explain why they should not come under RTI and have to declare details about their donors and funding. On the face of it, unwelcome as the scrutiny might be, it sounds hard to argue against it publicly. The Central Information Commission had said in its order “It would be odd to argue that transparency is good for all State organs but not so good for Political Parties, which, in reality, control all the vital organs of the State.” “There is no rationale for people who made the law to keep themselves out of its ambit,” said Anjali Bhardwaj of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information.

But the parties feel that transparency needs to stop at their doors. “Political rivals with malicious intentions” could file RTI applications and adversely affect the parties’ “political functioning” says the affidavit.

The question is whether that is enough reason to be exempt from RTI or whether that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. People with “malicious intentions” can file RTI applications about all the other institutions that come under its purview anyway. Why should political parties be afforded a higher degree of protective cover? People with “malicious intentions” file FIRs and frivolous lawsuits all the time which result in unsuspecting citizens finding themselves in lock-up for a Facebook post about Azam Khan or forwarding a cartoon making fun of Mamata Banerjee. What makes political parties special?

The parties can oppose being brought under RTI on technical grounds but are being deliberately blind to the larger spirit of RTI. It is about transparency and accountability. The parties, no matter how they dress up their objections, are basically arguing for opacity for themselves and transparency for others. RTI activists Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey do not mince words when they describe the larger message being sent out by the political class.

“The representatives of the people, have made it clear that they do not want to be answerable to the people. By removing themselves completely from the purview of the transparency law, they are preventing any obligation they might have to directly answer any query from the citizen on any issue.”

This means that the pious talk politicians routinely trot out about the pernicious influence of money in politics is just talk. If a party has no interest in having any light shine upon their financial dealings then it’s a little rich to imagine they would really be invested in cleaning the system where as Roy and Dey point out “the yawning gap between ‘statements submitted’ and real expenditures during elections is no secret.” That is the elephant in the room the political parties are dancing around.

The other major problem is the very spirit of RTI is gutted when more and more institutions get to opt out of it. If the courts, the CBI and now political parties are kept outside its reach, the exemption list grows more powerful than the law itself. Even more disturbing, it sets a precedent whereby other institutions can argue that they too be kept out of its purview because there are too many frivolous claims, too much paperwork, too many NGOs with suspect motivations and so on and so forth. Let’s face it no one in power really wants the RTI. But it exists because there is a larger consensus that it is important to the health of a democracy even if it’s a headache for those who are its targets. As long as almost everyone feels the pain, it works, the democratic gain compensating for the shared pain. As soon as more and more institutions opt out of it, it starts falling apart.

Politicians know they do not rank high in public esteem. They will claim that this RTI act will be just another way for the media/public/activists to gang up on them and try to browbeat them. One justification being put forth in the affidavit is that it was never the “intent” of the government to bring parties under the RTI. Subhash Agarwal, one of the primary moving forces behind the RTI, counters that by saying there is no need for original intent because “many bodies” who claim they are not covered by the RTI are declared public authorities by Information Commissions and High Courts. Political parties were not established by the constitution or an act of parliament and therefore should not be under the RTI argues the affidavit. But a body does not have to be established under the constitution to be called a public authority say RTI activists. Getting funds directly or indirectly from the government can suffice.

Researcher Ruchi Gupta argues that because political parties’ operations are subsidised by the government it makes sense to restrict disclosure to the flow of money, not internal deliberations. It is obvious that a party does not want its electoral strategy, its internal confabulation on the front page of the daily newspaper. Gupta says unfortunately “the RTI Act does not have space for graduated transparency.” Gupta feels a more level playing field would be one of mandated uniform disclosure by all parties, rather than just to an RTI applicant. But there is a difference between negotiating the scope and reach of the law (and the exemptions included in it) and arguing that you are outside its scope altogether.

That is what political parties fail to understand or choose to ignore. While they may think they have a solid technical case to demand they be kept out of the purview of RTI, they risk sounding arrogant in a country where the public routinely feels there’s one law for the aam aadmi and one law for the khaas aadmi. At a moment when they could be statesmen, they choose to be politicians. And this becomes one more instance where the political class looks like it wants to stick a flashing red beacon on its head and breeze through the laws it itself makes.