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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Don't believe the BJP and Congress claims that they're cleaning up poll funding -Milan Vaishnav

Don't believe the BJP and Congress claims that they're cleaning up poll funding -Milan Vaishnav

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published Published on Feb 7, 2018   modified Modified on Feb 7, 2018
-ThePrint.in

The larger lesson is clear: in an era when the Congress & the BJP can agree on next to nothing, they will gladly join hands to save their own skin.

Among all the talk of the aam aadmi focus emerging from last week’s Budget, many people may have missed one of its most self-serving acts. This manoeuvre found no mention in the Union Finance Minister’s presentation itself, but was instead buried in innocuous-sounding legalese contained in the draft Finance Bill tabled by the government. It is a mere 34 words placed on page 52, Part XIX, Section 217. The offending section reads:

In the Finance Act, 2016, in section 236, in the opening paragraph, for the words, figures and letters “the 26th September, 2010”, the words, figures and letters “the 5th August, 1976” shall be substituted.

This humdrum language sounds innocent enough—hardly worthy of further comment, unless, of course, you are a chartered accountant. And that superficial mundanity is precisely the point. But, look beneath the surface and these approximately three-dozen words are the latest stunt in a multi-year, subterranean effort to rewrite India’s election finance rules.

As with the recent introduction of electoral bonds, a new instrument that legalises opacity in political giving, India’s election finance regime—never particularly robust to begin with—is rapidly hurtling backwards. Don’t look to the opposition to come to the rescue, however, for it is implicated as well.

The origins of the present tamasha date back to 2014, when the Delhi High Court issued an order that found both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its principal rival, the Indian National Congress, guilty of accepting donations from foreign corporations. Under the terms of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010 (FCRA), a “foreign source” is defined as a company that has “more than one-half of the nominal value of its share capital held” by “corporations incorporated in a foreign country or territory”. By that definition, the Delhi High Court ruled, multiple donations from the London-based natural resources giant Vedanta (among a few others) provided to both parties ran afoul of the law on the books.

Caught red-handed by the court and referred to the Election Commission for punitive action, the two national parties got creative. In 2016, under the cover of darkness, the present Finance Minister inserted another seemingly routine clause into that year’s Finance Bill, retroactively amending the 2010 FCRA law in order to redefine what a “foreign source” actually is.

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ThePrint.in, 6 February, 2018, https://theprint.in/2018/02/06/dont-believe-the-bjp-and-congress-claims-that-theyre-cleaning-up-poll-funding/


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