The Law Ministry has cleared the ordinance route to amend the Right to Information Act to overturn a Central Information Commission (CIC) order bringing six major political parties under the ambit of the transparency law.
"The ordinance route has been approved. Now it is up to the DoPT to bring it before Cabinet," said a top Law Ministry official today.
Defending the move to amend the RTI Act, the Cabinet note states that by 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".
It says that the Representation of the People Act and the Income Tax Act provide sufficient transparency regarding financial aspects of political parties.
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".
As proposed earlier, political parties may not be added in the list of organisations (Section 8) exempted from parting information under the information act.
The 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 the RTI Act as they perform public functions.
