-Outlook Transparency promotes democracy, more the reason for political parties to come under RTI Act's purview There was great public outrage when legislators in Mumbai beat up an assistant police inspector because he stopped an MLA's car for speeding on the Bandra-Worli sealink. The sentiment was: What arrogance! How can lawmakers have so little respect for the laws they themselves made? However, the amendment in Parliament aimed at removing political parties...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Over 75% of donations to parties from unknown sources -Himanshi Dhawan
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Over 75% of the funding received by political parties is from unknown donors. This flies in the face of claims made by parties that details of their financial statements are in the public domain. According to data analyzed by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the total funds received by six national political parties between 2004-2005 and 2011-2012 was Rs 4,895.96 crore of which only 8.9%...
More »Finances are already open, says Left-Aarti Dhar
-The Hindu The Left parties have always maintained that the financial statements and accounts of a political party should be made publicly available, and hence strongly rejected the order of the Central Information Commission (CIC) that sought to bring six national parties under the purview of the Right to Information Act, 2005. Disputing the CIC's argument that parties were public authorities, Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist),...
More »Not all black and white-Ruchi Gupta
-The Hindu Political parties have acted as judge, jury, supplicant and advocate in their move to amend the RTI Act and remove themselves from its purview. Their rhetoric on transparency sounds more hollow now than ever. The RTI Act provides a regime of consummate transparency of "public authorities". Instead of specifying information to be disclosed, the Act mandates 100 per cent transparency subject only to a tightly defined list of exclusions under...
More »Fleeing the light -Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey
-The Hindu Political parties have acted as judge, jury, supplicant and advocate in their move to amend the RTI Act and exempt themselves from its purview. Their rhetoric on transparency is more hollow than ever A friend called the other day, and said: "I want to congratulate all of you in the RTI community, because you have managed to do what no one, and nothing else has managed to for a long...
More »