-The Hindu Business Line These bearer instruments can’t make political funding transparent; they don’t address the insidious corporate-politico nexus The Government is all set to introduce a scheme offering political bonds as bearer instruments which will conceal the identity of the bond buyers and enable a process of political donations that, it argues, will make funding political parties transparent. The argument is deeply flawed. Electoral bonds as envisaged here open up yet another...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Election Commission has sent a fresh reminder to the law ministry seeking "urgent" sanction of funds for procurement of voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) in time to hold the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with new-age EVMs. In a letter written to law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on March 22, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi reiterated that the order for supply of VVPAT needed to be...

-The Indian Express A large new study, releasing today, seeks to understand the fundamental bases of the choices India makes while voting in elections. The study seeks to document the ideas and attitudes that frame the country’s larger political culture. There is a lack of over-time data on how Indians think about intercommunity relations, relations between citizens and the government, and the nature of the political community. To fill this gap, the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A clutch of legal amendments the Narendra Modi government has introduced to allow corporate political donors to mask their contributions drags the world's largest democracy against global currents of rising transparency in Electoral funding, analysts and activists have warned. From Brazil to Bangladesh, and Croatia to Cyprus, countries of diverse sizes and varied histories with democracy have over the past decade adopted laws and rules aimed at making...

-NDTV In his maiden appearance after being named Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Yogi Adityanath proclaimed that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government would maintain a laser-like focus on the twin themes of combating corruption and restoring law and order. "In the past 15 years," Adityanath noted, "UP lagged behind in the race of development as previous governments indulged in corruption, nepotism, and failed on the law order front." Indeed, one of...