-The Telegraph ‘Ill-timed, improper’ amendment notified by Centre a bid by ruling party to take ‘undue advantage’, says former economic affairs secretary New Delhi: Former Union economic affairs secretary E.A.S. Sarma has asked the Election Commission of India to prevent the fresh sale of electoral bonds, as allowed under an amendment notified by the Centre on Monday that he described as “ill-timed, improper” and as a bid by the ruling party to...

-Newsclick.in On December 6, the Indian Supreme Court will decide on whether non-transparent Political Donations are hitting the sovereignty of the Indian people and their right to know. Electoral Bonds, in the transparency and accountability graph, as claimed by the government have some inherently anti-democratic characters. Their key feature of anonymity enables a system where people do not know who are giving/donating money to the political parties they then are voting for....

-The Telegraph The ambit of the corpus created to fight public health emergencies widened but its veil stays intact The veil on the PM Cares Fund — the corpus created to battle the Covid-19 crisis without the tiresome need for any audit scrutiny — remained firmly in place even as its newly-appointed trustees decided on Wednesday to widen the scope of its operations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a virtual meeting of the...

-PTI/ The Hindu Chief Election Commissioner suggests a slew of amendments to RP Act to increase transparency and accountability on part of candidate The Election Commission has proposed reducing anonymous Political Donations to ₹2,000 from ₹20,000 and cap cash donations at 20% or at a maximum of ₹20 crore to cleanse election funding of black money, sources said on Monday. Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar has written a letter to Union Law...

-The Hindu Court wanted to earlier take up a long-pending challenge against the government’s electoral bonds scheme, but the COVID-19 pandemic played spoilsport, says CJI N.V. Ramana Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana on Tuesday told advocate Prashant Bhushan that the court wanted to take up earlier a long-pending challenge against the government’s electoral bonds scheme, but the COVID-19 pandemic played spoilsport. Mr. Bhushan, who represents petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms, informed the...