An interactive meet on the Right to Information (RTI) Act — attended by RTI activists and public information officers (PIOs) as delegates — here on Sunday stressed the importance of bringing political parties under the ambit of the enactment meant to bridge the gap between the government and the governed.
The opposition of political parties to the 2013 order of the Central Information Commission (CIC) was the major highlight of the meet organised by the National Constitutional Club, Thalassery, and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), New Delhi.
In his keynote address, former Special Director of Central Bureau of Investigation and former Central Information Commissioner M.L. Sharma, who was in the three-member full bench of the CIC that held six political parties, including the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), to fulfil the criteria of being public authorities under the Act, said that political parties expected everybody to be transparent except themselves.
On being elected, parties form the government and thus perform public functioning, he said.
Mr. Sharma said political parties were the public authorities under the Act because they were substantially funded by the government, allotted land in prime locations, given tax exemptions, and free air time in government-controlled media during election campaigns. Though the order of the CIC still stood, no political party had implemented it by appointing PIOs or appellant authority, he noted, adding that no party had challenged the order either.
As the CIC did not have the authority to implement its own order and the Supreme Court should direct political parties to comply with it, he said.
Inaugurating the meet earlier, High Court judge A. Muhamed Mustaque also touched upon the subject when he said that the RTI enactment had been broadened and widened to include political parties as well under the purview of the Act.
Stating that the largest aim of the Act was to create an inclusive society that alone could bridge the gap between the government and the governed, he said that informed choice of the participant was a vital ingredient of democracy.
In his presidential address, former Director General of Prosecution T. Asaf Ali said the RTI Act was an enactment to empower people. Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) said that one government organ that was still not really transparent was the executive. Speaking on the RTI Act and Cabinet decisions, he said there was no reason why there should be undue secrecy in Cabinet proceedings.
State Chief Information Commissioner Vinson M. Paul inaugurated a ‘people's assembly’ in the afternoon. Inspector General of Police (Kannur Range) Dinendra Kashyap and District Police Chief K. Sanjay Kumar were present at the meet.
