Re: [IAC#RG] Congress tables RTI Amendment Bill 2013 in Lok Sabha

Dear Brig

I appeared in SC when I was about age 17 and addressed the Court 1 year later. My son did likewise when he was about 3-1/2 years.

Yes, you can still ASK in RTI to know how much Anil Ambani gave party X in 2011-2012. But you are unlikely to get any information if you ask it that way.

You can get in RTI what the party has filed in Form 24-A to ECI and u/s 13-A (Income Tax Act) to the Income tax dept. of their donors exceeding Rs. 20,000/-

The Ambanis operate through a vast maze of companies. eg.
http://ambanibrothersfight.blogspot.in/2009/10/mukesh-ambanis-ever-growing-media.html

So you would be better off taking the entire list of donors from the ECI and decoding the donors from there (good luck). Please keep in mind though that only about 20% of a party's receipts come from such "large donors". Then there is a vast army / professional network of persons who arrange for donations to be split up from dummies, this is used for black money laundering. In addition black money directly plays an important part in running these parties.

This is partly why the Govt / parties are not at all bothered about replying to such things in RTI through the ECI or CBDT etc.. This is the "clean" part of their business where everything is well polished. As Sureshan has said, and I agree, RTI is useless for exposing such things.

It is queries like mine about Rahul Gandhi's reported statement that he is a Brahmin that they don't know how to tackle in RTI !!!!

Sarbajit

On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 7:02 AM, M.N.Seshadri <manavasi.seshadri@gmail.com> wrote:

As a lay and an honest man I am getting more and more confused by these exchanges.  I also want toknow ythe age of Sarbajit. He appears to be atleast 30 yoears older than Sudarshan!!!

All I want to know is whether today  POLITICAL PARTIES can be asked to provide info I want to know. For example , If I ask how much did Ambani's give the BJP and Congress during the year 2012 to 2013.  And after the amendment on the P to day whether the same can still be asked.

We also hear quite frequently , particularly in Tamil Nadu , ( Both DMK and ADMK ) and even BJP and Congress issue statements such as  Mr. X  is expelled from the party for indiscipline and party cadres should not have anything to do with that X. I want to know the reason . . After all Mr X may join another party may seek election and so on . So the general public would like to know what exactly did X do to deserve this summary punishment without any trial . The surprising fact is that nothing is normally heard of this public figure's doings that invited such a summary punishment handed down so swiftly and usually accepted without any appeal or fight. This appears to be even better and swifter than summary punishments given by the summary court martial's at the lowest UNIT level.  But in the Army such punishments are given after summary trial recorded in a proper format and has to be routinely approved by the next commander !!  

Will Sarbajit educate me please . All I want is that the Political Parties must be much more transparent than any NGO or any voluntary organization  surviving solely on donations !!!  According to me the MOST unproductive ( contributing nothing to thre countries wealth are these  PARTIES .   Seshadri