Rahul Gandhi's ordinance comment: Mummy had shown the way

NEW DELHI: When Congress president Sonia Gandhi told her son Rahul Gandhi that he had used very strong words to criticise the government on the ordinance to save convicted legislators, she was only preaching what she had practised. In 2005, she had disapproved the way the Manmohan Singh government had framed the UPA’s landmark Right to Information (RTI) legislation, but her letter to the PM never raised any hackles.

The Department of Personnel and Training has publicised the correspondence on the framing of the RTI Act in 2005, which includes a letter written by Sonia Gandhi to the Prime Minister on January 14, 2005.

Gandhi’s letter to the PM said that the RTI Bill “overlooked certain crucial recommendations” of the National Advisory Council she headed and that the law would be “less effective than intended to be” as state and district public authorities of relevance to the common citizens were left out of the ambit.

Reminding the PM of the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme, which “pledged to provide a government that is corruption-free, transparent and accountable at all times”, Gandhi’s letter said NAC’s recommendations were to make the law “more progressive, participatory and meaningful”. She instructed the PM to ask a Group of Ministers to look into the whole matter on a “priority basis”.

Within four months of Sonia’s letter, the government duly moved amendments to the existing bill incorporating all her recommendations, the major one being bringing the state and district authorities under the RTI ambit. Her letter was critical but civil.

The Congress scion, who ended up embarrassing the PM who was in the US at that time, last week conceded that as an afterthought, he should not have used such words and it was a “mistake”, as pointed out by his mother to him.