Volunteers and Friends of Aam Aadmi Party in the United States, Singapore and Australia organised protests during the weekend against the planned amendment to the Right to Information (RTI) Act in the upcoming parliament session.
The protests were planned to show the strong public demand for transparency in political parties as well as the anger against the any amendments to the act by vested interests.
Protesters gathered in front of the Indian Embassy in Washington DC and raised slogans such as “Hands off our Right to Information” and “Why are you afraid of RTI?” against the union cabinet’s approval for an amendment to the RTI act last Thursday.
They expressed outrage over how many of the leading national parties, including the Congress and BJP, are united to scuttle this cornerstone order given by the Chief Information Commissioner to bring transparency in the functioning of political parties.
The main demands of the group to all parties was to not make any amendments to the RTI act and respect the order by immediately appointing public information officers in their party.
“Political parties play a very important and intrinsic role in our democracy and by all measures are public authorities. We fully support and appreciate the CIC’s order and will fight until political parties implement the order” said Madhusudan Narasiah from Boston and Akshay Anugu from Florida who were in town as part of ‘Swaraj Yatra’, a 210 mile walk from DC to NYC, organized to promote decentralization of power and transparency in governance.