Motilal Vora (centre) argued that electoral bonds, about which little is known, cannot ensure total transparency.
The Congress has objected to the government’s attempt to introduce electoral bonds and said that the move will rob electoral funding of transparency and demanded “total transparency”.
The party said that the bonds would be a opaque mechanism as only the government would have full information about it. “…to ensure total transparency, the names of the donors and the donees and the amounts donated must be disclosed so that the people will have the information,” Congress treasurer Motilal Vora said in a letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Jaitley had in May sought views of political parties on ensuring transparency in electoral funding.
Vora said that transparency implies that electorate must know “who is the donor, which is the donee political party and what is the amount donated”. He argued that electoral bonds, about which little is known, cannot ensure total transparency.
“The budget speech indicated that a scheme will be framed… but we have not been able to locate such a scheme. We, therefore, have only the budget speech and some comments that you made in April… Going by these, we infer that the donor’s name will be known only to the bank issuing the bond and the donee’s name will be known only to the income tax department,” he said.
“In effect… people will not know who donated how much to which political party,’’ he said.
