Sitaram Yechury: Electoral bonds 'regressive', ensure state funding of parties

Sitaram YechuryCPIM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury on Tuesday termed the idea of electoral bonds regressive and pitched for state funding of political parties and a ban on flow of corporate funds directly to them In a letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Yechury demanded a rollback of policies visavis electoral bonds including retrospective amendment to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act FCRA to allow indirect political funding by foreign companies and lifting of maximum limit on corporate contributions to political partiesContesting elections is now akin to a business enterprise possible only for the wealthy This needs stringent reform At the outset a good move will be to ban availability of corporate funds to political parties the Communist Party of IndiaMarxist CPIM leader said He said big corporates saw funding of political parties as an investment and an easy way to be able to push policies in directions that suit themThese corporates constitute the supply side of corruption which is corroding our system Unless the corporate funding is banned this problem cannot be solved he said Advocating state funding of political parties Yechury said No cleanup of political funding is possible minus state fundingIf like the Corporate Social Responsibility CSR corporates could be asked to donate a part of their earnings to a pool which in keeping with certain guidelines like the support individual political parties may have garnered in the previous election voteshare or the number of seats they have won it will be a much fairer and transparent way of contributing to the healthy functioning of the Indian democracyYechury cited Germanys example where state funding of parties from a corpus apportioned on the basis of seats and voteshare of the parties in the central and state legislatures in the previous elections is done He took strong exception to some recent changes introduced by the Modi government in this connection including introduction of electoral bondsElectoral bonds are a deeply regressive move They make the donor beneficiary and the amount each a vital aspect a state secret literally This shields donors from the gaze of the electorate which needs to know if policies are being made precisely because it helps certain influential donors he saidElectoral bonds alongwith the retrospective amendment to the FCRA which allows indirect political funding by foreign companies and the lifting of the maximum limit that corporates can contribute to political parties are the most retrogressive steps taken towards political funding in India and must be rolled back he added Yechury said that by lifting the maximum limit on political donations by companies the government had raised the prospect of setting up of shell companies with black money to fund political parties onlyThe contentreporting displayed on our website wwwmiddaycom is provided ASIS AS AVAILABLE by us from third party agencies sources without any verification from our side It may contain error bugs and other limitations The readers can rely on the content at their own will Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability data text images video messages or any other material whatsoever or for any claimslossaction that the reader may suffer as a result of relying on the content on our site Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoeverCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news current affairs from Mumbai local news crime news and breaking headlines hereDownload the new midday Android and iOS apps to get updates on all the latest and trending stories on the goTrending Video