Cabinet to discuss amendments to RTI Act to keep political parties out

The Union Cabinet will on Thursday discuss the amendment to the Right To Information (RTI) Act to keep political parties out of its ambit. The Cabinet will seek to ratify the amendments proposed which is likely to be notified as an ordinance. Most political parties have given its nod to the amendment.

The move comes after the Central Information Commission (CIC) last month held that six national parties the Congress, BJP, NCP, CPI-M, CPI and BSP are substantially funded indirectly by the Central government and are required to appoint Public Information Officers as they have the character of a public authority under the RTI Act.

Government sources had said that the Law Ministry had earlier cleared the ordinance route to amend the Right to Information Act but since the dates of the Monsoon session have already been announced and some parties have expressed uneasiness over supporting the ordinance route, it had been decided to bring a bill before Parliament instead.

Sources had claimed that back channel talks with all major parties had concluded. BJP had maintained that it will be difficult for them to support the Ordinance route to amend the RTI Act because they were opposing the Ordinance on food security.

At the same time, they had said that they would support amendments, if they were brought in form of a bill in the upcoming session beginning August 5, highly-placed sources in the government had said. The amendments state that declaring political parties as public authorities under the Right to Information Act would "hamper their smooth internal functioning since it will encourage political rivals to file RTI applications with malicious intentions".

They maintained that the Representation of the People Act and the Income Tax Act provide sufficient transparency regarding financial aspects of political parties, it was learnt. Under Section 2 of the RTI Act, the definition of public authority in the proposed amendment will make it clear that "it shall not include any political party registered under the Representation of the Peoples Act", the sources had said.