The indulgence proven to money donations has inspired enactment of an elaborate farce bordering on a charade by all events. When the cap on money donations was Rs 20,000, a hefty money donation of Rs 2 crore from out of black cash required invention of 1000 fictitious donors to cover the true identification of the donor. In 2017, the Revenue Tax Act was amended to tone down the leeway and put the cap at Rs 2000. This hasn’t fazed the political events and their accountants a wee bit. Solely they must do a bit of additional work — as a substitute of discovering 1000 fictitious small donors so that every one on paper didn’t donate greater than Rs 20,000, beneath the brand new dispensation they’ve to seek out 10,000 donors with every not contributing greater than Rs 2,000.
In India, you give an inch and other people take a foot. Any leeway or latitude is exploited to the hilt. Earlier than KYC norms occupied the nation’s consciousness and linking of PAN with Aadhaar made necessary, one with an revenue of Rs 1 crore would divide his revenue amongst 40 assessable items so that every had a taxable revenue of solely Rs 2.50 lakh which is the tax-free threshold. Splitting and splintering then comes naturally to crooks, be it for revenue tax avoidance or to hoodwink folks and the Election Fee of India (ECI).
At the moment, why in any respect give concession to money? With the arrival of UPI, fee by cellphones is quick catching on. Due to this fact, there isn’t any purpose why nameless money donations upto Rs 2,000 must be countenanced and condoned. There must be a whole ban on money donations, interval. It’s stunning that the Supreme Courtroom, which was outraged by the opaque electoral bonds sufficient to strike them as unconstitutional, hasn’t acted with the identical anger towards nameless money donations, given the truth that the latter intuitively play a better function in political social gathering funding. Will their Lordships of the Supreme Courtroom be happy to take a suo moto initiative on this regard? That is all of the extra crucial now that electoral bonds have been demonetised by the Supreme Courtroom vide its February 15 order. In its wake, there’s a fear that political events will surely revert again atavistically to nameless money.
There’s completely no purpose why all registered political events shouldn’t be mandated to simply accept donations solely by the fee gateways talked about of their web sites in order to go away a path and digital footprint.
Extra realistically although it have to be conceded that lion’s share of political donations emanates from company homes who want to donate in return for train of discretionary energy by the powers that be. So, allow us to not idiot ourselves that political donations are given for ideological causes or join between the economic home and a political social gathering. The concern of reprisal argued by the federal government counsel earlier than the apex courtroom within the electoral bonds case if anonymity was solid asunder could also be an exaggerated one given the political acumen of our enterprise homes which know which aspect of the bread to butter and sometimes butter each side simply in case! Be that as it might, regardless of the theoretical compulsions for anonymity, it has no place in a democracy.
By the way, the EC as lately as in September 2022 had written to the then Regulation Minister Kiren Rijiju to take away the anomaly of the Revenue tax legislation and the Illustration of Individuals Act talking in divergent voices — the latter nonetheless persisting with disclosure of donations in extra of Rs 20,000 fairly oblivious of the discount of the latitude to Rs 2,000 by the previous. Concomitantly, it additionally proposed a 20% restrict for money donations as a share of general donations. To wit, if a political social gathering had acquired Rs 100 crore as donations in a monetary 12 months, solely Rs 20 crore might be in money. This will likely seem like within the path of weaning money away from the electoral sweepstakes however deep down it raises the query — what occurs if on the year-end money exceeded 20% of the general donations?
Half options or partial indulgence don’t work. Money have to be stamped out lock, inventory and barrel. The Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman was proper when she mentioned whereas no system is ideal, electoral bonds at the least had the advantage of leaving banking footprints which to the chagrin of the benefitting political events has come dwelling to roost. The Supreme Courtroom may override the anonymity character of the electoral bonds and carry the veil of secrecy solely as a result of Late Arun Jaitley the then Finance Minister in 2017 whose brainchild it was thought (naively in hindsight) that nobody would dare flutter the dovecotes of the political events and the donors by demanding the banking footprint left by the purchasers of the electoral bonds and the political events to be revealed and made public. Maybe, he deluded himself within the lulling perception that the Supreme Courtroom wouldn’t charge proper to info above proper to privateness. Electoral bonds have been convoluted and circuitous — what may have been achieved by direct cheque fee was twisted right into a grotesque bond. The aim of the contrived convolution was to retain anonymity that money donations conferred and confer even at present. And BTW, these within the know weren’t fooled by the argument that electoral bonds emanated out of fresh cash given the truth that all financial institution deposits don’t ipso facto translate into clear cash. In spite of everything, cash laundering is all about making illicit cash legit by bringing them into the banking mainstream. It’s not solely Swiss banks which harbor illicit cash by not questioning their origins.
S Murlidharan is a contract columnist and writes on economics, enterprise, authorized and taxation points