Under fire from the Opposition over electoral bonds, whose detailed contours were explained in Parliament last week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday made a spirited defence of the measure but indicated he was open to suggestions.
Insisting that electoral bonds mechanism is a substantial improvement in transparency over the present system, Jaitley said the conventional practice of funding the political system by taking donations as well as undertaking expenditures in cash was a “wholly non-transparent” system.
He said in such a practice, where the sources were anonymous or pseudonymous and the quantum of money was never disclosed, the system ensured unclean money coming from unidentifiable sources.
In a Facebook post, Jaitley rued that since most political groups seem fairly satisfied with the present arrangement and would not mind this status quo to continue, the effort is to “run down any alternative system which is devised to cleanse up the political funding mechanism”.
“The government is willing to consider all suggestions to further strengthen the cleansing of political funding in India. It has to be borne in mind that impractical suggestions will not improve the cash denominated system, but only consolidate it,” he forewarned.
Soon after Jaitely presented the electoral bond scheme in Parliament last week, Congress hit out at the government, alleging that withholding donors’ names was a “regressive” step and apprehended that it would give unlimited access to the ruling party of the day to misuse the official machinery to coerce donors.
Jaitley said while he does believe that donations made online or through cheques remained an ideal method, these did not become very popular since they involved disclosure of the donor’s identity. The bonds are being pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties, he said.
Holding that the amount of donation one has made to a political party would be known only to the donor in this system, Jaitley said the choice has to be consciously made between the existing system of substantial cash donations, which involve total unclean money and is non-transparent, and the new scheme which gives the option to donors to donate through an entirely a transparent method of cheque, online transaction or through electoral bonds.
“While all the three methods involve clean money, the first two are totally transparent and the electoral bonds scheme is a substantial improvement in transparency over the present system of no-transparency,” he said.
MISSION CLEAN-UP
- Jaitley defended his government’s electoral bond scheme and said most political groups seemed fairly satisfied with the present arrangement
- However, he rued there are efforts to run down any alternative system devised to cleanse the political funding mechanism
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 "Arun Jaitley")
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