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Suggest ways to make electoral funds cleaner: Arun Jaitley to Opposition

Facing protests on amendments suggested for electoral funding in the Finance Bill in Parliament, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday asked the Opposition parties to suggest ways to make funding of elections cleaner and more transparent.

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Finance Minister Arun Jaitley addresses Lok Sabha on Thursday
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Facing protests on amendments suggested for electoral funding in the Finance Bill in Parliament, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday asked the Opposition parties to suggest ways to make funding of elections cleaner and more transparent.

"I have an open invitation for all. Please suggest a better system which will ensure clean money and transparency to the maximum extent possible," he said while replying to a debate on amendments to the Finance Bill 2017 that the Rajya Sabha had sent back to the Lok Sabha to consider.

Jaitley said that although the Opposition were against the provisions of the Finance Bill related to electoral bond,s they have not proposed any suggestions. "I am only hearing things like it must be clean and transparent. Please give me an ideal combination of the two. We are willing to consider it. I will wait for a specific suggestion," he said.

Defending the Finance Bill, Jaitley said it is not possible for the government to accept the amendment as it will limit the number of donors to political parties.

"The harsh reality is that we continue to play politics on the basis of undeclared money, because if we do it on the basis of declared money... somebody will write an editorial and will have a problem with every solution we offer," Jaitley said.

The Lok Sabha rejected all the amendments by a voice vote, thus passing the same Finance Bill 2017 that the government had proposed.

One of the amendments proposed by the Rajya Sabha — where the ruling National Democratic Alliance is in a minority — was a provision for companies to disclose the name of political parties which had made contributions.
The Opposition accused the government of running roughshod by opening doors for "political extortionism" and passing "draconian" provisions in the Finance Bill.

Taking a dig at the Congress that was at the forefront of opposing electoral bonds, Jaitley said it could continue to accept donations by cheque and see how many people donate to them.

Scoring a moral victory in Rajya Sabha, the opposition parties had proposed amendments related to deletion of provisions relating to powers given to income tax officials, set an upper limit on how much a company can donate to a political party, and called for disclosure of the name of corporate donors.

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