The unbridled flow and influence of hush money in elections has always been a matter of concern and the introduction of electoral bonds on January 2 last year has lent more teeth to the criticism that it has opened a legitimate route for vested interests to flush ill-gotten wealth to influence electoral outcome under a veil of anonymity.
The National Democratic Alliance government had described the bond scheme as an electoral reform in a country moving towards a cashless digital economy. As of now, donors need not provide their names, address or PAN on contributing less than ₹20,000.
Foreign funding
The Election Commission had said in an affidavit to the Supreme Court that the bonds, contrary to the Central government claims, would wreck transparency in political funding.
The decision to lift the cap on foreign funding would be an invite for foreign corporates to impact Indian politics and government policies.
Act amended
The affidavit was placed in public realm by the Association of Democratic Reforms. The Centre had amended the Representation of the People Act, 1951, the Income Tax Act, the Companies Act and made changes in the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, to lift the curbs on funding elections.
The Election Commission clarified that the amendments would help to pump in black money for political funding through shell companies and clear the route for unrestricted foreign funding of parties which would pave the way for Indian politics being influenced by foreign companies.
A retrograde step
The amendments to the RP Act help political parties to hush up recording donations through electoral bonds in their final statement to the election commission.
This is described as a retrograde step that struck at the root of transparency. The commission now has no way to find out whether the donations were received by political parties from companies or overseas sources.
According to P.D.T. Achary, former Lok Sabha Secretary General, the issue of bonds goes against transparency, the grain of public policy. “Political parties are not private entities and are active players of democracy who are entrusted to run the government and frame public policies. Hence, the funds they receive from various sources should be subjected to public scrutiny.” The donations to political parties should not be shrouded by a blanket of anonymity, he says.
Mr. Achary clarifies that the ruling party will be invariably benefited by such moves and hence it should be subjected to public auditing.
This mysterious funding mode will help corporates to influence government functioning and policy making too, he says.
Political observer J. Prabhash deems the issue of bonds would end up with four or five hyper-rich corporate families controlling the democracy, framing of policies and government business too.
Cap on funding
“A cap on funding is imperative. A maximum limit should be set for making contributions to political parties. Crowd funding is the best regimen to address the malaise of black money flowing into the electoral arena. Communist parties have set a model worth emulating by mobilising resources from the masses. They collect even small sums to fund their campaigning and that would weed out the scope for the infusion of black money into the poll arena,” says Mr. Prabhash.