It is essential to understand what precisely the terminology public authority means and how the political parties come under the ambit of the very same terminology. “A public authority may be described as a person or administrative body entrusted with functions to perform for the benefit of the public and not for private profit. It is not incumbent that a body in order to be a public body must always be constituted by a statute; for an authority to be a ‘public authority’ it must be an authority exercised or capable of being exercised for the benefit of the public” . In the light of the expression of the term public authority it is clear that a body even though it might not be constituted by the support of any statue and is engaged in exercising certain public duties without the motive of profit is certainly a public authority. The political parties of any democracy is performing the same functions as a public authority, thus concluding that the political parties would ipso facto be covered under the ambit of Public Authority under the Section 2 (h) of the Right to Information Act, 2005.

As the Political Parties are continuously engaged in the performance of public duty and it is, therefore, important that they become accountable to the public and be transparent in purview of the allocation and distribution of party funds. In a Government of responsibility like ours, where all the agents of the public must be responsible for their conduct, there can be but few secrets. The