Political parties under RTI: Welcome move or terrible idea?

The Central Information Commission’s (CIC) ruling to bring six national parties under the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act has prompted a debate on whether political parties should be open to scrutiny of country’s citizens. At present, political parties submit their tax returns to the income tax department. Details of the same can be sought under RTI from the income tax department. Before assembly and parliamentary polls, candidates are required to inform the Election Commission if they have criminal cases against them and the Election Commission has already been revealing these details, in response to RTI applications. [caption id=“attachment_846997” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Image for representation only: AFP[/caption] The CIC ruling pushes these measures even further and now allows citizens of India to file RTI queries directly to six national political parties. This has led to a debate on whether CIC commissioners have gone overboard because so much information is already in public domain. However there is a school of thought that they should be brought under the purview of the transparency law, as their functioning is shrouded in secrecy. Parties and candidates deal with huge amounts of money, which often becomes a source of money laundering and corruption, noted an editorial in The Indian Express newspaper. But to fix the problem, we need tighter tax compliance and not RTI disclosures, it suggested. Shailesh Gandhi former central information commissioner said that the purpose of RTI is not to uncover things which cannot be uncovered. “Through RTI Act, we can only get information which exists in the records of the party. There is no way we will get to know something which does not exist in records. If a party is using black money to fund its election campaign, citizens will never know it through RTI because the party is not going to keep a record of such dealings. It will never say so many lakhs or crores of rupees used by it was black money,” said Gandhi. Political parties will use the law to settle scores rather than advance public interest, is also a concern expressed in the Indian Express editorial.  Sanjay Kumar, fellow at Delhi based Centre for Study of Developing Societies agreed. ““We are not talking about small offices or institutions. Political parties have a larger role to play in the democratic set up. If we put too much pressure them, they will find it difficult to function”, he said. Apprehensions were somewhat similar when UPA I formulated the RTI Act in 2005. It was said that government offices would face a tsunami of RTI queries and a good amount of resources and money would be diverted in answering these queries. Based on feedback from bureaucrats, the government considered amendments to the RTI Act which included amendments to avoid frivolous and vexatious applications. However, there is no government data which records the number of vexatious queries. When the government offices have survived RTI Act for almost years, there is no reason why political parties will collapse under its weight, argued Jagdeep Chhokar, founder member of Association for Democratic Reforms and aide to Anil Bairwal, in an interview to Firstpost . “If the contention is that RTI covering political parties will destroy the political system, then your understanding of political system is limited. RTI Act is in existence for more than seven years now, but no institution in the country has collapsed under the weight of this Act. Secondly, political parties don’t have the sole authority on their functioning. We, the people, also have a say in country’s politics. Even we are into politics, not electoral politics though. Therefore, if not coming under RTI is the intention of political parties, then, bringing them under the Transparency Act is our wish. To finish or destroy political parties is not our aim. We are just working to enhance transparency and accountability in political parties,” Chhokar said. That Political parties should not be bound to disclose their strategies and decision making process, is another argument to keep them outside the ambit of transparency Act. “These are internal matters and the party should not disclose it. It is like asking that what am I doing with my property and why I deemed it fit to give more share from my property to person A than person B,” said Kumar. The Indian Express edit observed that the CIC order fundamentally misunderstands the place of parties in a democracy, their right to association, to choose their own tactics to mobilise voters and to be discreet about their strategies. BJP leader Arun Jaitely disagreed with this view, in an interview given to NDTV . This is stretching the argument too far, as the RTI Act can make a decision public, but not the decision making process, he said. “As far as decisions inside the party are concerned, I don’t think RTI will go the extent of wanting those decisions to be made public.” Anil Bairwal said that it was wrong to think that now everything about the political parties including their decision making process will be out in the public. As per the law, public authorities are entitled to deny certain kind of information. “The RTI Act allows for exemption for disclosure of information. For example, information, disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of a third party, cannot be given to public. Political parties can use such provisions to deny information. The denial has to be justifiable as per the law,” he said.