Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, July 18: The Sangarsh RTI Movement has announced to file a complaint under Section 15 with the State Information Commission for bringing the political parties in the State under the RTI Act.
This was informed by Balvinder Singh, convener of the Movement, while talking to media person, here today.
He also shared the apparent approach of three major regional parties in J&K towards the RTI Act, which was evident from their reply on the RTI applications filed to Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party, People’s Democratic Party and the National Conference.
“Following the order of the Central Information Commission of India declaring the major political parties under the ambit of RTI Act, we filed RTI petitions seeking to know the amount of donations received by these three parties during the last five years but only PDP provided the sought information and hence admitted to come under the RTI Act,” he said.
“The sought information was quite general and could have been easily provided under the RTI Act as a common man has all the right to know that what these political parties do with the funds collected from the masses,” Mr Singh added.
Activists Raman Sharma and Deepak Sharma, while expressing displeasure over the dishonouring of the Transparency Law made by the other two political parties, alleged that attitude of NC and JKNPP was against the ethos of participatory democracy where the people are the real masters and the Government and political parties are just their representatives
“The political parties which are shying away from transparency must tell the people that why they are reluctant to fall under the RTI Act when they themselves enacted this law in the State Assembly on March 20, 2009,” they said.
Harasis Singh, another member of the Sangarsh RTI appealed leaders of all the political parties to honour this transparency law and hoped that NC and JKNPP would also respond to the RTI pleas soon.
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