Electoral bond protest: Congress MPs Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and others protest over the alleged electoral bond scam, during the winter session of Parliament, in New Delhi on November 22, 2019. photo credit: vijay verma
Two developments again hit the headlines on the controversial Electoral Bond Scheme. on 7th november Center amended the scheme To allow an additional period of 15 days for the sale of Electoral Bonds in election years in the States. Whereas when it was introduced, these bonds were made available for a period of 10 days each in January, April, July and October with the exception of Lok Sabha elections.
on 14 October The Supreme Court agreed to fix a hearing on a petition challenging the scheme On 6 December. While considering the petitions, Justice BR Gavai asked the government whether the scheme was transparent, to which Solicitor General Tushar Mehta replied, “The method of receiving funds is absolutely transparent… Any black or unaccounted money received It is impossible to do.” The NDA government has consistently claimed that the scheme has ushered in an era of transparency since it was introduced in 2018.
However, data analyzed from the annual report of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) shows that the share of “undisclosed sources of income” has increased after the introduction of electoral bonds, contrary to its intention.
The ADR classifies the income of political parties into two major types – known and unknown. Known sources of income are further classified into two types – voluntary donations above ₹20,000 whose donor details are submitted to the ECI and “other sources of known income” such as sale of movable and immovable properties, etc.
Unknown sources include donations of less than ₹20,000 through the sale of electoral bonds, coupons, etc., for which the details of donors are not available to the public. An amendment to the Representation of the People Act by the Finance Act, 2017 made a provision to exempt parties from declaring funds collected using electoral bonds.
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Table 1 Shows that the share of such undisclosed sources of income for national parties has increased from 66% between FY15 and FY17 to 71% between FY19 and FY21. The transition year FY18 was not considered for the analysis. In the same period, the share of unknown sources of income for regional parties increased from 55% to 68%. The BJP’s share in undisclosed income increased from 58% to 68% during this period, while the Congress’s share remained around 80%.
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Further, the share of electoral bonds was 57% and 64% of the total income of national and regional parties in the FY19-FY21 period, respectively. Therefore, the undisclosed share of income increased and electoral bonds were a major reason behind the increase. The “other known sources of income” were not considered while computing the total income in both the periods as it is not dependent on donations.
Table 2 Shows the break-up of various unknown sources of income of national parties in ₹ crore. This shows that after the introduction of the scheme, the burden of undisclosed income has only shifted to other routes such as donations below Rs 20,000 and sale of coupons to electoral bonds.
Meanwhile, election and other spending has increased, as shown in Table 3, Election expenditure of both BJP and Congress increased by over 60% between FY19 and FY21 as compared to FY15 and FY17
Table 4 Shows that BJP has grabbed a major chunk of the electoral bond income. The party received 67% of the funds raised through electoral bonds by all parties between FY18 and FY21. If only national parties are considered, the share goes up to 81%.
vignesh.r@thehindu.co.in and rebecca.varghese@thehindu.co.in
Source: Annual Report of the Association of Democratic Reforms
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