It Takes Hercules To Cleanse Augean Stables, Mr FM

- Suyash Saxena

In his Budget speech on February 1, 2017, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made three important announcements. First, a political party will not be permitted to accept any donation of more than Rs 2,000 in cash from a single source in a given financial year. Second, electoral bonds will be rolled out by the Reserve Bank of India and political party donors can buy them through cheques or digital payments. These bonds will be redeemable in the designated accounts of political parties. Third, political parties will be “entitled” to receive donations through cheques and digital modes.

However, the proposed initiatives are almost inconsequential in achieving their objective of making political funding transparent. An institutionalised framework of State funding of political parties and elections needs to be established in order to introduce transparency into the system and remedy it of corruption.

INEFFECTUAL INITIATIVES

At present, a political party is entitled to accept an undisclosed donation of up to Rs 20,000, either in cash or otherwise. Firstly, the government proposal simply slashes the upper limit on cash funding from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2,000 from a single source in a given financial year. This will only inconvenience the political parties to an extent that donations to them will now have to be made through smaller instalments of Rs 2,000 instead of Rs 20,000. Experts feel that the same amount of clandestine income will flow into the party coffers but broken into several and smaller instalments without the Election Commission having the authority to inquire. It will only reroute the flow of shady political funding.