ADR wants law to make digital receipt and donation for political parties compulsory

I am not alone in this, there are many people who have worked for this. There are also people outside ADR who have helped in this. So, all those people deserved to be congratulated.

How many of these are shell companies, I think total analysis is yet to be done. I suppose, some of them will be shell companies. But if they are not, I will be very happy. That was just scepticism, that I had that a lot of companies may not have given or may not have purchased electoral bonds in their own names. So that is an apprehension, which may or may not be true. As of now, I am not personally aware whether all the names are genuine or there are some shell companies,

Yes, we are analysing, so also a lot of other organisations are doing. All the newspapers, television channels and civil society people are also analysing. This is public data, everybody has a right to analyse this. 

So, many people are assuming that there could be some companies through which they may have funded. People are talking about two particular companies in the list.

Well, they should know. I have no reason to doubt their statement until somebody investigates that company, going to the registrar of companies and finding out, who has set up that company. That avenue of investigation remains.

I think there was life before electoral bonds and there will be life after electoral bonds. If you think of Indian democracy from 1951 to 2016, all over the world, it was considered to be a very good democracy. It is not that after 2017, it became outstanding and also not that after 2024 when the electoral bonds just stopped, it will become terrible. Indian democracy was healthy and alive with some problems. I’m not saying that democracy till 2016 was the best. If democracy was so good, we would not have been working to improve democracy since 1999. So, there were problems before 2017, too and those problems remain.

The electoral bonds had not improved the process. It had made the process worse. Right now, that worst element is over, and we are back to where we were, and we will continue to work to make that better without an additional complication like the electoral bonds.

There is a very simple way out. If you remember when demonetisation happened, what was the country told? We were told that all transactions should be digital, right? If we are moving toward the digital economy and cashless economy, if the whole country can become cashless, why can’t political parties become cashless? So, if every political party, through a law, was made to accept donation and make payment only though digital means, it will help. But who wants to do that as every political party is involved.

Every system will have a problem unless we make it completely transparent, including such transactions of political parties.