The RTI act is a tool by which the parliamentary democracy in our country is ensured, the very aim of

the Act is to enable Citizens to have at least the minimum requisite information needed for making
an informed decision and to hold all the public authorities accountable. If through the right provided
by this act a citizen can get all the required information by which he/she can get the information
about the political parties then they can use their right to elect their political representatives in a
better way this will further the basic tenet of the democracy. The political parties coming within the
ambit of the Right to Information Act 2005 has been a longstanding issue under discussion and has
not been resolved till now. The section 2(h) of the RTI act deals with the definition of public
authorities, the authorities that fall under this section are only responsible to provide information to
a citizen under this act. Though the light of RTI must be fallen on the political parties as lack of
information regarding them hamper the right of the citizens to vote and elect their representatives,
but the political parties would be under the ambit of RTI act only when they fulfil the criteria of
public authotiy as established by the section 2(h) of the act and the interpretations of the section
through various judgements. The following research paper tries to establish that the political parties
are well within the boundary of the definition of public authorities as established by the section 2(h)
and the interpretations of the courts. Besides this importance of the role played by the political
parties in the democratic setup and the types of work perfomed by them will help in analysing their
funcctionings which can be critical in examining their role as public authorities as prescribed by the
RTI act.