Bonds meant to promote white money in politics: Jaitley

NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday slammed critics of electoral bonds, including NGOs, and said the new instrument for political donations was meant to increase the contribution of “white money” as opposed to the earlier system, where black money was used for funding political parties and elections.

“If the bonds don’t exist, the consequence will be that donors will have no option but to donate only by cash after siphoning monies from their businesses. The recent Election Commission and I-T raids have shown that it is taxpayers/government’s money, which, through PWD and other departments of the government, is being siphoned out and round-tripped into politics. Is that a better option or the reformed system of all white money and improved, if not a perfect transparency? NGOs and commentators must look beyond their nose,” he wrote in a blog.

Pointing to cash seizures by the EC and tax authorities in states, Jaitley highlighted such actions, particularly in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, north-east and Madhya Pradesh. The income tax department on Sunday searched at least 50 locations in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Goa belonging to people linked to MP chief minister Kamal Nath and last month the tax department had searched the premises of aides of a JD(S) minister in Karnataka. Similarly, searches were conducted at the premises of senior DMK leader Duraimurugan in Vellore in Tamil Nadu over suspected use of unaccounted money for electioneering and Rs 10 lakh of alleged “excess” cash was seized.

Lashing out at NGOs dealing with elections and electoral reforms, Jaitley said they had a tendency to “either exaggerate or misrepresent” and display a lack of understanding of how parties functioned. He said all parties needed, on a pro-rata basis, the same amount of money depending on the number of seats they were contesting.

“The only question is ‘what is their fund collection culture?’ Do they still prefer the old obsolete style of only black money being collected or do they prefer to collect it by legitimate methods like crowd sourcing, cheque and electoral bonds? Obviously, the BJP prefers the latter. It declares larger income and gullible friends in the NGOs believe that they get more,” the FM wrote.

He also asked whether NGOs believed the balance sheets of BSP, SP, TDP and other political parties. “They obviously don’t disclose the income that they get because most of these donations are in cash. This has significantly reduced the credibility of the reports of these NGOs,” he wrote.

Jaitley said he had been associated with the entire journey of political funding reforms. “As law minister in the Vajpayee government, I had moved a bill legitimising donation of cheque provided the same was declared to the income tax department and the Election Commission. To incentivise these donations, we provided that the amount donated to political parties would be deductible expenditure,” he said.

He also mentioned the role of Pranab Mukherjee, who as finance minister during UPA-2, brought out a second reform in 2010.

“A donor could donate to a registered electoral trust which in turn would donate to a political party. The disclosure will only be of the name of the electoral trust and the link between the identity of a donor and the party would be snapped. This practice legislated by UPA-2 is still in progress and utilised by some,” he wrote

He said that in 2017, based on the principle of masking the identity link between the party and the donor, the NDA created the instrument of electoral bonds. “This instrument provides for a complete white money donation,” the minister said.