Electoral Bonds and Associated issues

22 Nov 2022 Electoral Bonds and Associated issues

Significance for Prelims: Not Much

Significance for Mains: Issues associated with the electoral bond.

News: Since the inception of electoral bonds, electoral bonds worth Rs 10, 246 crores have been sold by the State Bank of India. In 2016 and 2018, the government amended the FCRA through the annual Finance Bills when the Delhi High Court held that both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were guilty of violating Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 1976, as these parties accepted donations from two companies registered in India but whose controlling shareholder a foreign company(Vedanta).

Government initiative in cleaning the politics:

• Reduction in anonymous cash donations to political parties from ₹20,000 to ₹2,000 to ensure greater transparency in political funding.
• The introduction of electoral bonds brought reform. 

Issues with Electoral bonds: It allowed full anonymity to corporate and foreign political donors.

• Corrupting influence of anonymous corporate money: After electoral bonds now even loss-making companies can contribute to political parties, before the amendment and changes in the Companies Act, 2013 only profit-making domestic companies could contribute to political parties. 
• New form of Colonialism: Now onwards foreign companies or companies where the controlling stake was held by a foreign company could contribute in donations to political parties. Theoretically,  India’s political parties could be fully funded by a foreign company operating in India or by a foreign entity through a shell company.
• Reduction of public and legislative oversight: Now, only the ruling party has a complete record of all electoral bond donations through the State Bank of India (SBI). This information is not known to the public, the Election Commission, the Opposition parties, or the Parliament.
• Unconstitutional nature of electoral bonds: Various Public Interest Litigation(PIL) challenges by the institutions such as the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR)  termed these bonds as unconstitutional. 
• Complications in receiving information from Right to Information (RTI) regarding electoral bonds, since ordinary people do not have the resources to navigate documents on obfuscating government websites for information to enable accountability of the government. 

Conclusion and Way Forward: Electoral bonds dilute the universal franchise of one voter-one vote and give political power to companies, wealthy individual donors, and foreign entities. It gives companies the power to influence policies through hidden donations. The real winner of the electoral bond arrangement is the ruling party and the loser is the average voter. Political parties and Companies should demonstrate moral leadership by disclosing the names of donors and recipients, as the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha did recently.

Source: The Hindu

Article: Needed: full disclosure on electoral bonds

Article Link: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/needed-full-disclosure-on-electoral-bonds/article34824570.ece 

sharad