Comments
Interaction with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley cannot happen without a word on political financing and electoral funding, a subject close to his heart and which is also the twin objectives of Narendra Modi government’s guiding philosophy — colour of money and transparency.
So, when Jaitley was asked by N Ram, Chairman, Kasturi & Sons, on electoral bonds and why corporate donations are made on expectations of quid pro quo, he said the government will soon issue guidelines for redeeming Electoral Bonds aimed at ushering transparency to political funding.
Jaitley said, “I want the opinion of all parties while formulating the electoral bond scheme. The tentative idea is that the Reserve Bank of India would authorise one particular bank to issue the bonds. The bonds should be redeemable within a short period — let us say, four weeks of its purchase.”
He said that the Electoral Bond Scheme will be administered under the Income Tax Act. “Now that the Finance Bill has been passed and it’s got the Presidential assent on March 31, we’ll shortly be announcing the scheme,” he pointed out. The bonds will be purchased by Electoral Trusts only through cheque payment. Jaitley said that this will bring ‘clean’ money for political funding and discourage siphoning off corporate funds for donation to political parties.
On the duration of these bonds, Jaitley said, “Four weeks, because otherwise, it will turn into a parallel currency.”
The bonds can be encashed only by a recognised political party and it can only be done in one predeclared account of the political party. He explained, “The Congress, Bhartiya Janata Party and Samajwadi Party will all have to declare one account each to the Election Commission and this (Electoral Bond) will be redeemable only at a recognised bank account of the political party.”
Over the years, it will be known as to which party got how many bonds; so, in the hands of the party, it will be clean money, he added.
Jaitley said that the BJP is working to increase their online donations and will initiate a campaign for getting online contributions from one million people.
“I have suggested to my party to start an online campaign for political funding and to get at least a million people to contribute,” he said, adding that this system will eliminate the possibility of a quid pro quo from donors as there will be a large corpus and no obligations on parties.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.