The Supreme Court
recently struck down the system of electoral bonds that was introduced to
provide funding to political parties. The court directed the State Bank of
India, that was authorised to issue such bonds, to submit details of the
electoral bonds purchased, including information about the purchaser of these
bonds as well as the political parties and the amount of donations received by
them. Recently, SBI released this information through its website.
Instantaneously, Rahul Gandhi and Uddhav Thackeray, based on the specific and
selective information given to them, once again demonstrated their ignorance.
They have tried to create controversies in the past, even when the Rafale deal
was being struck. But they were grossly criticized and fell flat on their
faces. There is no doubt that this will happen again in this case also.
Now before I get into elaborating how these leaders criticized the
Electoral Bond Scheme (EBS), let me quickly take you through this scheme. The
nation had its first general election in 1952. During that time, the Congress
was in power. Since then, till 2017, political parties used to receive funding
in cash only because the donors didn’t want to make their names public and
hence, no records were ever maintained, thus making it a ‘black affair’.The
Modi government, during its 2017 budget, proposed the EBS as a means to
‘cleanse the system of political funding’ and implemented it from January 2018.
It was expected that these bonds would restrict black money in elections. Prior
to EBS, anyone could donate cash up to Rs 20,000 to a specific party. Should a
larger donation be required, a cheque could be written out. As a result,
practically all political parties used to rope in lakhs of such individual
donors who would make cash donations under Rs 20,000. In fact, Arun Jaitley,
the then union finance minister, had discussed electoral bonds on multiple
occasions before presenting it in the union budget. He had also discussed its
vitality to evolve a transparent method of funding political parties for free
and fair elections in depth in the Parliament. The Modi government was aware
that EBS wasn’t a full-proof system and was open for suggestions to modify it.
It is sad that the method of financing political parties for elections
in the biggest democratic system in the world lacked transparency. The way
political parties used to receive funds was seriously flawed; most of this was
unaccounted for, leading to corruption. Also, since many political parties
believed that there was nothing wrong with sticking to the age-old practice,
any efforts made to bring about transparency were often thwarted, Jaitley had
stated. The EBS was a system where parties would receive funds via bonds,
internet transfers or cheques. In the past, since there was no transparency in
this process of funding political parties for elections, many corrupt leaders
or people with criminal connections used to get elected. It used to be a cruel
farce of democracy for lawmakers to hold legislative positions in the
Parliament. Everyone who was involved in it knew about these dishonest actions.
But since these transactions were happening within the ambit of law, no action
was ever taken.
Between 2004-05 and 2014-15, there was a significant increase, almost
313 per cent rise in donations to political parties from unknown sources. The
funding received by national parties from unidentified sources in the financial
year 2004-05 was Rs 274.13 crore which went up to Rs 1,130 crore during the
fiscal year 2014-15. The regional parties, on the other hand, received almost
652 percent more donations from unidentified sources during this period. It was
Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, the only national party to declare that during
this 10-year period, it had not received donation more than Rs 20,000, which
suggests unequivocally how this party had acquired all of its funding from
unidentified sources. The Modi government brought EBS with an assumption that
if all donations are made through these bonds that are issued by banks, there
will be transparency in the election process.
Under EBS, any Indian citizen or company formed in India could purchase
these bonds from any SBI branch for the political party they wished to fund.
Also, according to Article 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951,
political parties which secured more than one percent votes in the last general
election to the Lok Sabha or a Legislative Assembly were eligible to accept
donations through electoral bonds and encash it from authorized banks only. The
foundation of EBS was trustworthy presumption that
political parties will be responsible for the contributions and money deposited
in their bank accounts.
When some
companies received notices from the ED or the Income Tax departments, certain
media houses published news that these companies had made donations to the BJP.
When asked about it, union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had reprimanded
the journalists asking these questions. She had asked them to understand the
information provided by SBI before raising such doubts. The BJP, that has 303
MPs, is claimed by the Opposition to have received donations worth Rs 6,000
crore whereas the Opposition combined, including the Congress, Trinamool,
Telangana Rashtra Samiti, Biju Janata Dal and DMK, with 242 MPs received
donations totalling Rs 14,000 crore. My concern thus, is that black money will
again enter politics if the EBS is abandoned.
It may be recalled how Rahul Gandhi had made accusations regarding
‘malpractice’ in the Rafale procurement agreement. Even Uddhav Thackeray, who
was once in power with the BJP, had levelled similar accusations against the
Modi government. Both these leaders somehow seem to have forgotten how they had
fallen flat on their faces and this time too something similar seems imminent.
(Article Pre-Published in Times of India -18 March
2024)
Keshav Upadhye, Chief Spokesperson
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