Electoral Funding in India - Inputs needed on Solutions
Dear Friends:
Below are the Issues and Root Causes for the current state of Electoral Funding in India. Please review them and help identify Solutions to them.
We will then be putting together the whitepaper for submission to the PMO and Chief Election Commissioner of India for actions to be taken.
We look forward to your inputs!
Rajendra Pratap Gupta
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Root Causes for Electoral Funding Issues
1. Lack of centralized guideline on fund sources
2. No laws to force the parties to disclose the amount of funding collected
3. Some businesses are happy to fund political campaigns so that they could ask for favours once the party in in power
4. Cost of fighting election is increasing steeply
5. No limit on the number of parties contesting elections
6. Political parties do not need to file income tax returns
7. Muscle power and threatening tactics are used sometimes to force businesses to donate
8. Lack of political will to take any steps in this direction
Electoral Funding - Key Issues
1 Most of the parties are funded by businesses
2 No audited financial statements are made by the parties
3 Black money finds excellent usage during elections
4 ‘Chanda’ is collected in cash from the market on the pretext of better services when in power
5 The details of the funding is not made public
6 No receipts issued for the collections made
7 Details of how much spent is not disclosed
8 No effective mechanism to check if candidates or parties have exceeded the spending limit more
Below are the Issues and Root Causes for the current state of Electoral Funding in India. Please review them and help identify Solutions to them.
We will then be putting together the whitepaper for submission to the PMO and Chief Election Commissioner of India for actions to be taken.
We look forward to your inputs!
Rajendra Pratap Gupta
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Root Causes for Electoral Funding Issues
1. Lack of centralized guideline on fund sources
2. No laws to force the parties to disclose the amount of funding collected
3. Some businesses are happy to fund political campaigns so that they could ask for favours once the party in in power
4. Cost of fighting election is increasing steeply
5. No limit on the number of parties contesting elections
6. Political parties do not need to file income tax returns
7. Muscle power and threatening tactics are used sometimes to force businesses to donate
8. Lack of political will to take any steps in this direction
Electoral Funding - Key Issues
1 Most of the parties are funded by businesses
2 No audited financial statements are made by the parties
3 Black money finds excellent usage during elections
4 ‘Chanda’ is collected in cash from the market on the pretext of better services when in power
5 The details of the funding is not made public
6 No receipts issued for the collections made
7 Details of how much spent is not disclosed
8 No effective mechanism to check if candidates or parties have exceeded the spending limit more
Viewed by 10230
View all 108 comments Below 108 comments
If Some party starts working honestly in governance then That party will enjoy mass support and hence will require less funds, so less donations from business houses and subsequently Will be forced to make less undue favor. So Expect for a tough task that is Honest Political Leaders. more
May 23
Election commission can curb role of corporate funding by reducing time of election campaign and allowing only internet /mobile methods for communicating with people. Strict audiing of political parties accounts will also help in above. more
Apr 26
Corporate Sector funding of election for different political parties are done all over the world and I'm not sure how this can be stopped. In any case this should be made mandatory for every corporate sector to declare how much they have contributed for each party. No corporate sector should be allowed to fund individual leaders. If any corporate body or HNW individual fail to declare their contribution but later found guilty law be made to punish them, instead of asking the political parties to declare there source of funding. Law exist for foreign funding of political parties which must be implemented with letter n spirit more
Apr 26
When the B.J.P , the ruling party itself in favour of getting secret funds from Corporate Sector along with Congress Party, the common man in this country can not do any thing more
Apr 25
