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are submitted to the Commission by different political parties under
the relevant law, and as such, those are categorized as information
supplied by third-parties (a«a£u fr La«ÑL plhl¡qLªa abÉ). Since those falls
under the category of information supplied by third-parties, the
incumbent Officer of the Election Commission was bound under
section 9(8) of the RTI Act, 2009 to seek consent of the political
parties concern. Most of the political parties expressed their opinion in
negative in respect of disclosure and supplying of those reports to the
petitioners; therefore, the Commission, considering such opinion
decided not to disclose and supply that information to the petitioners.
However, some of the political parties expressed their opinion in
positive in respect of disclosure and supplying of those reports to the
petitioners; therefore, the Commission acted according to their
opinion and disclosed and supplied those information to the
petitioners. The Commission acted in accordance with the RTI Act,
2009 and thereby committed no illegality. It has also been stated that
some of the registered political parties have submitted audit reports of
their income and expenses to the Election Commission for the year
2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively along with the forwarding letters
(Annexure-7series), where none of the political parties, so far, have
made any specific request to the Commission to consider those audit
reports as “confidential”.
At the outset, Dr. Sharif Bhuiyan, the learned Advocate
appearing with Mr. Tanim Hussain Shawon, the learned Advocate on
behalf of the petitioners submits that the Right to Information Act,