Congress President Rahul Gandhi. (PTI)Congress CHIEF Rahul Gandhi has said that although he is not against political parties coming under the ambit of Right to Information Act, but other institutions, like the judiciary, press, bureaucrats and top industrialists must also be brought in. Speaking to university students Saturday, Rahul said only bringing political parties under RTI will weaken them with respect to other institutions.
“I am all for transparency,” said Rahul, adding, “but the question is, it has to be applied across the board because if it is applied in political parties only, then you will weaken the political parties with respect to other institutions”.
He said that he agrees that “transparency should increase 100 per cent” but it has to be understood that a political party is a “janata ka institution”. “Judiciary, press, politicians, bureaucrats these are all institutions,” Rahul said. He then asked, “If you talk about political parties, then why not RTI in judiciary, why not RTI in press, why not RTI in bureaucracy for individual bureaucrats.”
He said that “if you want RTI on political party so I also put in top 20 businessmen in the country” as “I want to understand what they are doing”. Taking credit for the transparency law, he said, “We brought the RTI, the Congress party, Dr Manmohan Singh brought RTI.”
