There is no denying that political parties of all ideologies and shades have been less than exemplary when it comes transparency and accountability in funding of their activities and campaigns. It is surprising that political parties who always campaign about honesty in governance somehow, for some strange logic have kept themselves outside the purview of financial scrutiny. It is also surprising that the Income Tax department is hell bent on ensuring that every citizen’s earned single penny is counted but strangely, the same IT department very much blind to the obvious malpractices in the funding of political parties.
The Indian politics can’t be cleaned until and unless political parties adopt clean, transparent and auditable means of funding for their activities. Currently the way political parties are funded are less than ideal and is the root cause of dishonesty and corruption in governance.
We fundamentally believe that in a democratic system financial matters of political parties should be fully in public domain for audit and scrutiny at all times. Political party, like any other organisation needs financial resources for its functioning. But unlike any other organisation it is not free to adopt any means to raise funds. A political party cannot also engage in the any enterprise that involves profit making, as it would then be in contradiction to the very nature of political party. Political party is not a business enterprise rather a vehicle to do public service.
To ensure that Lok Samya Party as a political party lives up to the highest ideals of public service resolves to raise funds through individual donations from Indian citizens having a valid voter card only. It will not accept donations from religious groups, non-religious groups, businesses of any type, trusts, NGOs or foreign organisations. As a practice, the Lok Samya Party will not accept anonymous donations or any donations in cash. Furthermore, the party will NOT accept donations from individuals of more than INR 20,000/- (cumulative total in a financial year) without a valid PAN card. It will also not accept donations from individuals of more than INR 50,000/- (cumulative total in a financial year) without ITR filing of the previous financial year.
To ensure that all received funds are traceable and auditable, the party will only accept individual donations through:-
1. Electronic payments (mobile payments, credit cards/debits cards, bank transfer)
2. Cheques
We also propose that to encourage clean, sustainable, diverse political discourse, the political parties must be funded by government directly. State funding will bring stability and probity in the functioning of political parties.
We also propose that there should be a limit on the expenditure that a political party is allowed to do for an election. Election commission has put a limit on the expense of candidate but it has not put any limit on the spending capacity of a political party. To disengage the overwhelming role of money and muscle power in politics the Election commission must put a limit on party expenses as well.
We fundamentally believe that clean and honest funding will ensure clean politics. But to achieve this ambitious objective the voters must realise that they too have a very crucial role to play to make political funding clean and transparent.
Why don’t you take the first step towards Clean Political Funding campaign here ?
