HC for people's access to info

The High Court yesterday ruled that people must have access to income and expenditure statements of political parties under the Right to Information Act.

It also declared illegal the Election Commission's refusal in 2013 to provide such information to Sushasoner Jonno Nagorik (Sujan), a civil society platform.

The verdict came following the hearing on a writ petition by Sujan that had challenged a decision of the Information Commission to uphold the EC's refusal.

The observations of the HC and the basis of the verdict could not be known, as the court is yet to release the full text of the judgment.

Election Commissioner Shah Nawaz said the commission was yet to decide whether to move an appeal before the Supreme Court, challenging the HC verdict.

Petitioner's lawyer Sharif Bhuiyan told The Daily Star that public institutions were obliged to provide information relating to people's affairs to anyone seeking it under the RTI Act 2009 following the HC judgment.

The law, however, does not require the institutions to provide information about some issues, including personal, foreign countries, intellectual properties and researches. In those cases, the reasons behind not giving information must be laid out, Sharif said.

Yesterday's verdict will help establish people's legal and constitutional right to get information from the public institutions, he said, adding that it held significance to the media and journalists too as the institutions would be bound by the law to provide information to them. 

Sujan Secretary Badiul Alam Majumder in June 2013 sought information from the EC about annual income and expenditure of the registered political parties.

The EC replied that the information was secret and could not be given without the consent of the political parties.

Badiul then appealed to the Information Commission for a directive on the EC to give him the information. In July 2014, the Information Commission rejected his plea on similar grounds.

Sujan leaders Badiul, Syed Abul Maksud, M Hafiz Uddin Khan, SM Shahjahan, Tofail Ahmed and Ali Imam filed the writ petition with the HC the following year.