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Ignoring summons by the Central Information Commission, none of the six political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress, on Friday appeared before it for a hearing on non-compliance of its order that they came within the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
The full Bench of the Commission, comprising Information Commissioners Vijai Sharma, Manjula Parashar and Sharat Sabharwal, heard the views of complainants Association of Democratic Reforms, activist Subhash Agrawal and intervenor R K Jain, who demanded issuing of showcause notices to the parties for imposition of a penalty.
The CIC on June 3 last year had declared the Congress, BJP, Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Nationalist Congress Party and Bahujan Samaj Party as public authorities answerable under the RTI Act and had given them six weeks to comply with the mandatory requirements under the law for the processing of information seeking applications. But none of the parties had followed the directives.
