Transparency and Political Parties – Finding the Right Instrument

In a recent post, I had written on why I think bringing political parties under the Right to Information Act is a bad idea. Economic and Political Weekly recently published my article on the same topic, where I critique the judgement of the Central Information Commission in detail, and argue that transparency in incomes and expenditures of political parties should be enforced by the Election Commission, rather than under the RTI Act.

While the CIC judgment follows developing judicial precedent under the RTI Act, bringing political parties under the purview of this Act opens a Pandora’s box that the CIC itself probably has not thought through. International practice demonstrates that the onus of creating more transparency within the political system is the task of independent election commissions.

The EPW article can be found here.