[Marxistindia] Electoral Funding -- Sitaram Yechury's Letter to Arun Jaitely

[news from the cpi(m)]

January 9, 2018

Press Release

We are herewith releasing the text of the letter addressed to Finance
Minister Shri Arun Jaitley by CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury
spelling out the CPI(M)’s position on electoral funding.


(Hari Singh Kang)
For CPI(M) Central Committee Office


****
January 9, 2018
Shri Arun Jaitley
Minister of Finance
Government of India
New Delhi

Dear Shri Arun Jaitley ji,

I am writing as you have asked for suggestions on ‘reforms’ on Electoral
funding.

The CPI(M) has constantly and consistently maintained the need for clean
electoral funding, and has been deeply concerned over the years as the
system has become more skewed towards those with more money. Contesting
elections has now become akin to a business enterprise, possible only for
the wealthy. This, needs stringent reform.

At the outset, a good move would be to ban corporate funds from being made
available to political parties. We believe that corporates, and especially
big corporates, see funding of political parties as an investment, an
effective and easy way of being able to push policy in directions that
suit them. Political parties too, on being recipient of corporate funding
use stints in government to make policies that suit ‘friendly’ corporates.
These corporates constitute the ‘supply side’ of Corruption which is
corroding our system. Unless corporate funding is banned, this problem
cannot be solved. The government in 1985, reversed a ban on corporate
funding of political parties which had been in place since 1968, but that
did not cure the problem of corporate or black money funding political
parties; it made the problem worse.

Currently, there is no limit on amounts spent by political parties for
election campaigns while there is a limit on the amount that candidates
can spend. This, as you know, makes a mockery of the very idea of having a
limit on campaign spending. We urge you to bring the Expenditures of
political parties within a legal limit, violation of which would be
subject to stringent punishment.

Corporates, like all powerful sections of Indian society, must be asked to
do their bit towards strengthening Indian democracy and we think this
should take the form of them being asked to give a part of their profits
towards a State fund set aside for electoral funding.

No ‘clean-up’ of political funding is possible minus State funding, at
least in substantial part, of elections. This has also been recommended by
the Dinesh Goswami Committee and the Inderjit Gupta Committee which dwelt
on the subject in detail. If like Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR),
corporates could be asked to donate a part of their earnings to a pool
which, in keeping with certain guidelines (like the support individual
political parties may have garnered in the previous election, vote-share
or the number of seats they have won) it would be a much fairer and
transparent way of getting to contribute to the healthy functioning of
Indian democracy, than is the case now.

In Germany, for example, there is state funding of parties, from a corpus
which is apportioned on the basis of seats and vote-share of the parties
in the Centre and state legislatures in the previous elections. Declared
collections by political parties each year, are also matched in certain
proportion by money that the state gives to the parties. (This is apart
from indirect subsidies like ensuring time on television news
proportionately and fairly, across political parties).

We firmly believe that we need such measures, fine-tuned to our conditions
to make the process of funding to political parties more transparent.

The measures you have introduced recently, I regret to say, have reversed
any move towards transparent and clean political funding that may have
been possible. Electoral Bonds are a deeply regressive move. They make the
donor, donee and the amount, each of these three vital aspects, a state
secret, literally. This shields donors from the gaze of the electorate
which needs to know if policies are being made precisely because it helps
certain influential donors.

By lifting the maximum limit on Companies available for political
donations, you have raised the prospect of allowing ‘shell’ companies
being set up with black money to purely fund political parties. This is a
step that is also seriously injurious to the state of our democracy.

Having amended the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA),
retrospectively, via the Finance Bill, this government has made it
possible for foreign funding to flood the coffers of political parties,
adding a dangerous dimension to the stability of Indian democracy.

We are deeply concerned about the measures put in place by this government
to render the funding of political parties even more opaque than before.
What it does is to provide an ‘Electoral Bonds route' for dubious funds,
to pass, unrecorded and undeclared, shielded from the public eye, to
certain political parties.

Electoral Bonds, alongwith the retrospective amendment to the FCRA (which
allows indirect political funding by foreign companies) and the lifting of
the maximum limit that corporates can contribute to political parties are
the most retrogressive steps taken towards political funding in India and
must be rolled back.

We urge your government to review and immediately reconsider these
measures which constitute making political funding a ‘black box’ which has
no scope public scrutiny.

We hope this conversation on electoral funding leads to a deeper debate
which your government must push on introducing much needed and more
comprehensive electoral reforms. (In Opposition you had supported our
proposal of introducing partial proportional representation, but having
reaped the fruits of first-past-the-post, your enthusiasm seems to have
dissipated).

I hope that in this New Year, the government would be urged to take new
steps which would make our democracy healthier, more transparent and
enable a genuine level-playing field, where a common citizen can find it
as easy to contest elections as a moneyed one.

With regards

Yours Sincerely,




(Sitaram Yechury)
General Secretary