Be Money Aware

Political funding or political finance is the method of raising the money for political campaign and other political activities by political parties. Nowadays, the political funding is spreading political corruption like extortion, kickbacks, embezzlement etc. This is why the government of India is looking forward to bring more transparency in political funding by the political parties. Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, had recently expressed that the government is soon going to take major steps to cleanse the entire political funding in the country. He also shared why the current norms of political funding are doing no good and must be revised.

According to political news, the election spending limit is kept on the candidates but not on the political parties. Also, the lower limit of the anonymous cash donations is capped at Rs. 2000/- which again does not help because the political parties declare that all the donations they have received are lower than the limit. Since the rule states that there is no need to disclose the names of the buyers by the political parties of proposed electoral bonds, the provision of transparency goes for a toss.

The data shared by finance ministry also revealed that actual earnings of the political parties as a percentage of donation amount. The figures are eye popping. Bhartiya Janta Party has the highest annual income of about 970 Cr and the donation was 437 Cr. The donation as a percentage of income was found to be 45%. For the INC, AITC and NCP, the donation as a percentage of income was found to be 28%, 2% and 8% respectively.

Some ways the central government has suggested to increase the transparency in the political funding by the parties are mentioned here with:

• Linking of all the cash transactions with the Aadhar card. This will enable a quick access to the actual name of the buyer and the exact amount of the transaction. This is probably one of the best ways to make the political funding transparent.
• As against the current government norms and rules, it should be allowed to disclose the name of the buyer of the proposed electoral bond.
• If one of the political parties is found causing a delay in the reporting of the income or an expenditure statements, they must be penalized.

In past, several attempts were made to curb the malpractices by political parties like a documented list of donors who contributed more than Rs. 20,000 to any political party in cash or cheque was to be maintained. This improved the situation only slightly because political parties continued to receive most of their funds through anonymous donations.

The legal news says, an amendment isproposed to RBI to issue electoral bonds so that the donor can purchase bonds from authorized banks. Also, a proposal that every political party must file their ITR within the time prescribed in accordance with the provision of the Income Tax Act is also suggested hoping that this reform will bring greater transparency and accountability in political funding.

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