Bring politcal parties under RTI if other institutions also included: Rahul Gandhi

NEW DELHI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday if political parties were to be brought under the ambit of the Right to Information Act, then other public institutions like the judiciary, the media as well as the bureaucracy must be brought under the Act, too.

Taking questions from students on the rise in intolerance in India, Rahul directed a jibe at Modi and said the message of peace would have to flow down from the PM. "I have seen my grandmother being killed with 32 bullets and my father being killed by a bomb. Those who have felt violence will never think of violence as a solution. Violence can only be ended with love. This was the philosophy, when despite Modi said all kinds of things to me and my family in Parliament, that I went to hug him," Rahul Gandhi said, advising the students to “try it”. “It is magic,” he said.

Explaining his view on the RTI Act, the Congress chief said, “I’m all for transparency. But it has to be applied across the board. If it is only applied to political parties, it will weaken them in comparison to all other institutions,” Rahul said, in response to a question on why sources of political funding should not be brought under the purview of the RTI Act during an interaction with university students.

The Congress chief also said that while the RTI Act was one way to identify and tackle corruption, it was not the only one, bringing up the setting up of the Lokpal, which he said the BJP government had stymied the implementation of.

“Today the RTI law itself has been demolished by the Modi government,” Rahul said, adding that the biggest source of corruption was in the allocation of land, and that when he worked on the Land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement Act, he was “beaten for it”.

Interacting with students, Rahul blamed the deepening job crises in India for the rise in intolerance and anger. The Congress chief held the Modi government responsible for setting in motion the trend of “making excuses, as a country” and said the only solution was to recognise the problem of job crisis and to address it.