Relevance: GS Paper II
Source
Polity/ Governance
Theme of the Article
Electoral reforms should look beyond “anonymity of donors” to make a real difference.
Election Expenditure in India
- Over the past six decades, election expenditure skyrocketed almost 274 times from ₹ 0.26 million to ₹ 71.38 million per constituency between 1952 and 2014.
- A recent survey of some 2,577 politicians across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand shows that the preponderance of inscrutable sources of income reaches the zenith for high-level incumbents like a member of Parliament or a lower house in the stateassembly (constituting almost 44% and 47% of their respective incomes).
Electoral Bonds: the Issues
- Political financing in India is an economy in which the state will keep exerting a heavy hand to incentivise clandestine funding. Electoral bond scheme does not break through this opacity.
- The electoral bonds have lent the political parties the statutory immunity for denting, rather than simply circumventing, these regulations.
- The most disconcerting aspect of such sanctions is that these make the electoral system potentially an apparatus for legitimising the black income of both the “benefactor” and the “beneficiary.”
- For instance, relaxing the definition of “foreign source” companies has opened up the route for legalising the political donations even from shell companies.
- While the amendment in the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 2010 has removed the embargo on foreign funding for Indian elections, its application with retrospective effect for 42 years has enabled political parties to emerge clear of sub judice inquiries on “illicit” foreign donations in all previous elections.
- There are amendments in the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and the Income Tax Act, 1961 that have legally reinstated the case for anonymous donations, though for amounts below ₹ 20,000. Yet, there remains an absence of clarity regarding the maximum number of times that donations of this magnitude can be made by any particular contributor.
- If money is the distorting factor for an ethically integrated polling process, why did the ECI raise the expenditure limit for individual candidates from ₹ 40 lakh to ₹ 70 lakh? And, that too, when the (self-declared) audit reports of key contestants from the dominant political parties showed only 15%–20% utilisation of the erstwhile prescribed expenditure limit.
- In fact, how does the ECI even determine how much money is “enough” for a candidate to contest an election?
- By raising the expenditure limit for candidates despite their (self) reported underutilisation, is the ECI silently admitting the deliberate under-reporting of incomes and expenditures by political parties and candidates, and in turn the porosity of its own monitoring mechanisms to prevent such manipulations?
The Institutional Paralysis
- Despite the plethora of commissions and recommendations, the failure to contain the costs of elections and the impropriety of their funding, suggests that the institutional ecosystem in this country is orchestrated to safeguard the state-driven laissez-faire attitude towards political funding.
- Regulatory institutions, be it the ECI or the Supreme Court are deliberating on the interests of the (relatively few) donors, rather than the 850 million voters, notwithstanding that the identity linkage between the political parties and their donors can dictate the degree of the voter-centricity of state policies.
Conclusion
The fundamental issues—such as the codification of election expenditures, monitoring beyond the period of the model code of conduct, and the very structure of the electoral system—can make a real impact on electoral reforms.
