Two days after Union finance minister Arun Jaitley—who also holds the I&B and Corporate Affairs portfolios—advised ngos like Greenpeace to be transparent and disclose their sources of funding, the Central Information Commission (CIC) indicted the Delhi & Districts Cricket Association (DDCA) for not being transparent enough. The DDCA claimed it was not covered under the Right to Information and therefore had no obligation to furnish information about its functioning. The irony was not lost. Jaitley was the DDCA president for 14 years. He continues to be its chief patron.

The CIC held unanimously that the DDCA, although an autonomous body, fulfilled conditions for being declared a ‘public authority’ under the RTI, as it had been using government land for commercial purposes. But it refrained from passing an order outright, because two of its earlier orders holding the India International Centre and the Delhi Golf Club declaring them to be public authorities had been stayed by the Delhi High Court. Despite repeated efforts, Jaitley was not...