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‘BJP prefers cheques, electoral bonds for poll funding’, says Arun Jaitley
If the electoral 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, Arun Jaitley said.
Union finance minister on Sunday warned that if there were no Electoral Bonds there is a danger of going back to the all-cash and completely opaque system of poll funding.
“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,” he wrote in a blog.
He also pointed out cash seizures by the Election Commission and the Income-tax authorities in various states, mostly ruled by other parties pointed to round-tripping of government money into politics.
“The past few days have witnessed several cases where the Election Commission and the revenue authorities, both separately and acting jointly, trying to curb the use of blackmoney in elections. These actions have been particularly significant in States like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, North-East and Madhya Pradesh.”
“The recent Election Commission and IT 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-tripping into politics.”
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He also lashed out at NGOs dealing with elections and electoral reforms saying “they a tendency to either exaggerate or misrepresent” and “display a lack of understanding of how parties function.”
He said all parties need, on a pro-rata basis, the same amount of money depending on the number of seats they are contesting.
“The only question is ‘What is their fund collection culture?’ Do they still prefer the old obsolete style of only blackmoney 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.”
Jaitley took pot shots at the BSP and the SP, the TDP and other parties whom he did not name and asked if NGOs believe their balance sheets.
“Do they honestly believe the balance sheets of the BSP and the SP, the TDP or several other 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 are declared to income-tax and the Election Commission. To incentivise these donations we provided that the amount donated to political parties would be deductible expenditure.”
He also praised Pranab Mukherjee, who as Finance minister during the UPA-II, 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-II, is still in progress and utilized by some.”
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 which provides for a complete white money donation.
The bond as a banking instrument of State Bank of India, a Party had to deposit it in a single declared account by the political party. “Both at the hands of the receiver and the donor, it is white money through a declared channel. As far as the transparency is concerned, as against the original system of cash which was non-transparent throughout, there is an improved transparency in the electoral bonds,” he wrote.
