(FE)
The government is actively working on cleansing the opaque political funding system in the country through the electoral bond mechanism, finance minister Arun Jaitely said on Saturday. He, however, lamented that no party had come up with a suggestion to make such funding more transparent, even as they resorted to “empty rhetoric”. “For the past 70 years, the Indian democracy has been funded by invisible money, but elected representatives and relevant institutions, including Parliament and the Election Commission, have failed to check such opaque system of political funding,” he said. “I asked political parties, both orally in Parliament and in writing, to offer a better suggestion to me. Not one has come forward till date because people are quite satisfied in the existing system,” Jaitley said at the Delhi Economics Conclave, organised by the finance ministry. To improve transparency in political funding, Jaitley had in this year’s Budget speech announced that anonymous cash donations to political parties be restricted to just Rs 2,000 each, while proposing to introduce electoral bonds. As per the mechanism announced in the Budget, the proposed electoral bonds will resemble a promissory note and not an interest-paying debt instrument.
