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SP in favour of parties coming under RTI -Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui
-The Times of India


LUCKNOW: Breaking ranks with the other parties, the Samajwadi Party on Thursday said it favoured a mechanism of checks and balances for transparency in the functioning of the political parties. The SP was referring to the June 3, 2013, ruling of the chief information commissioner (CIC) that says political parties come under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Almost all national parties have opposed the CIC ruling.

National president of SP lawyers' wing Gaurav Bhatia told TOI that the party was in favour of some checks and balances to ensure transparency in the present working of political parties. "We can always debate on the nature and extent of these checks and balances, but we are unwilling to straightway dismiss the CIC order," Bhatia said.

"If you go through the CIC order, it does not apply to SP as it is specifically for the national political parties namely the Congress, BJP, CPI and BSP. We are a regional party. But we are of the view that people and institutions which claim to work for the people must ensure that no one has any question about their functioning," Bhatia said. The general perception is that many political outfits make money in power and push it in the party corpus in the form of voluntary donations less than Rs 20,000 per head. Hence, a system is required to ensure that such donations are also accounted for, he added.

The most contentious point of debate is the voluntary donations that parties receive. These are divided into two segments: one, donations up to Rs 20,000 and the other is above Rs 20,000. While those donating above Rs 20,000 are required to provide their PAN numbers along with income tax details, for money below Rs 20,000, neither the party nor the donor is required to certify anything.

Interestingly, almost all political parties in their books of accounts show 95% income through donations up to Rs 20,000 only. As per the income tax returns of the Samajwadi Party for 2011-12, the party accrued an income of Rs 11,48,11,825.58, but not a single penny was taxable. The party has received voluntary donations from nine parties where the amount was above Rs 20000. In all, Rs 1.02 crore was pooled in by a single identity from Mumbai but in seven installments.

The Bahujan Samaj Party, too, is not behind. The documents of BSP for the assessment year 2011-12 show that the party received Rs 222, 940, 000 as membership fee from new members and another Rs 713, 800, 000 as voluntary donations. Interestingly, not a single donation from that amount was above Rs 20,000. Allegations are that the situation is worse in terms of political giants like the Congress, BJP and CPI where the ration of the two types of donations is up to 2:98, where 2 signifies the fraction of donations that were above Rs 20,000.

Most of the national parties, however, claim that their objection over parties coming under the RTI is primarily because they are already filing details of the election expenditure and annual I-T returns with Elections Commission and the income tax department respectively. Hence, there was no reason why a new mechanism be introduced. About keeping records of donations below Rs 20,000, the top political outfits believe that keeping records of every donation below Rs 20,000 will be a humongous task and a chunk of the manpower will remain engaged in keeping these records.

Disposing of a complaint that certain political parties have refused to entertain applications seeking information about the funding under the RTI Act, a bench headed by CIC Styanand Misra along with information commissioners, Annapurna Dixit and ML Sharma, has ruled that political parties perform public functions and thereby have the character of public authority as per section 2 (h) of the RTI Act.