Past efforts at out-of-court resolution of Ayodhya dispute have been non-starters It is neither possible nor advisable to disregard the Supreme Court of India since Article 141 of the Constitution says, “The law declared by the Supreme Court shall be binding on all courts within the territory of India,” and also because the authority, and […]
The Finance Minister has redefined these terms and now there’s a completely opaque system of political funding in place. This is the question that the Finance Minister has placed squarely in the public domain since February 1, 2017, when he presented the Budget 2017 in Parliament. The Finance Minister seems to think they, do but […]
While the Budget’s effort to include electoral funding issues is commendable, a closer look at the provisions tells a different story. In a significant departure from past practice, the Budget announced by finance minister Arun Jaitley on February 1 had a separate section on ‘Transparency in Electoral Funding’. The ‘Key Features of Budget 2017-2018‘ put out […]
An attempt is being made to change the narrative so that the proposal is seen as something the Election Commission wants rather than an agenda the Modi government is actively pursuing. On October 6, the Hindustan Times reported the observations of election commissioner O.P. Rawat in Bhopal in response to questions on the possibility of holding simultaneous elections […]
When a government which says it wants to remove black money tries to defend acceptance of foreign money by political parties and opposes transparency of political funding, doubts arise about its actual intentions. In the middle of the prime minister’s ongoing campaign against black money, an appeal filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress […]
The demand that political parties function democratically must come from the people Suhas Palshikar gave sound advice to those who wish to set up and run political parties in an appropriately titled article, ‘How to have a good party’ (IE, October 24). The article was followed, the next day, by Sanjaya Baru advising “an institute of management education” […]
Election Commission doesn’t have full authority to avert another pen fiasco in Rajya Sabha polls, by Jagdeep Chhokar (Congress suffered a blow in the recently held Rajya Sabha polls after an independent candidate backed by it lost the elections. At the centre of the controversy was the usage of a pen, other than the ink […]
The recent advertisement by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat House Committee reiterates that our ‘public’ representatives and ‘public’ servants do not consider public money to be their own, and thus show little accountability in its expenditure. The issue of salaries for members of parliament (MPs) and members of legislative assemblies (MLAs) has been a matter of […]
The government appears to be seeking to counter news reports that are critical of the planned amendment to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. Since The Wire broke the story of the proposed surreptitious amendment of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010 (FCRA) to let the BJP and Congress off the hook for illegally accepting donations from foreign companies, there has […]
Given the obvious conflict of interest, the party MPs must make the honourable decision to opt out of voting on the amendments. It was reported in December 2015 that a “proposed amendment to section 2 (1) (h) of FCRA, 2010, has been sent to the law and finance ministries for their comments,” which would “make funding easier […]