Parties under RTI: Supreme Court notice to Centre, Election Commission

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre, Election Commission and six national political parties — BJP, Indian
national Congress, NCP, CPI, CPI (M) and BSP, the Election Commission on a writ petition that political parties be brought under the ambit of the Right to Information Act. A three-judge of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna issued notice on the petition filed by BJP advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay and directed the matter to be tagged with petitions already filed by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and RTI Activist Subhash C. Agrawal. The petitioner submitted that political parties held a significant power and hold over the legislature and the executive as well as their own candidates.

And this hold has been made absolute because of the power of political parties to disqualify elected MPs and MLAs under the Constitution (anti-defection law).
He also submitted that political parties received huge sums of money from the public as donations and are not liable to pay any taxes and must therefore be accountable to the public. He pointed out that the political parties had defied the CIC order for several years.

The petitioner sought greater transparency and accountability in the functioning of all recognized national and regional political parties in the country.

He wanted a direction to all national and regional political parties to disclose for public scrutiny complete details of their income, expenditure, donations and funding including details of donors making donations to these political parties and their electoral trusts. Great harm is being caused to public interest due to lack of transparency in the political system and the political parties, as the electoral system is generating huge black money and large sums of money are being spent on every election, thus leading to violation of citizen's rights under Article 14, 19(1)(a) and 21 of the Constitution.