Noting that electoral bonds pose a grave threat to transparency in political fundings, the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) on Wednesday said that they are ‘extremely damaging to the Indian democracy’. “The Finance Minister had said these bonds will be in the nature of a bearer bond, the identity of the donor will be kept […]
State Bank of India (SBI) has once again refused to divulge details, sought under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, of the Electoral Bond (EB) sale data of donors and recipient political parties, even though admitting that whatever little information it had was “goofed up” while handing it over to senior RTI activist, Venkatesh […]
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his 2017 budget speech, stressed the government’s commitment to cleansing the system of political funding. ‘Money power’ is the bane of our electoral system. Political parties are collecting and spending huge amounts of money for elections, 70 percent of which is from unknown sources and a substantial percentage is, allegedly, […]
Budget promises more transparency in poll funding. But why anonymous donors? The 2017-18 Union budget had an unusual feature, a section titled “Transparency in Electoral Funding”. Many commentators have hailed it as a positive step. But is it? An interview with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in this newspaper is revealing. He stated: “The present system […]