Electoral Funding in India - Inputs needed on Solutions
Below are the Issues and Root Causes for the current state of Electoral Funding in India. Please review them and help identify Solutions to them.
We will then be putting together the whitepaper for submission to the PMO and Chief Election Commissioner of India for actions to be taken.
We look forward to your inputs!
Rajendra Pratap Gupta
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Root Causes for Electoral Funding Issues
1. Lack of centralized guideline on fund sources
2. No laws to force the parties to disclose the amount of funding collected
3. Some businesses are happy to fund political campaigns so that they could ask for favours once the party in in power
4. Cost of fighting election is increasing steeply
5. No limit on the number of parties contesting elections
6. Political parties do not need to file income tax returns
7. Muscle power and threatening tactics are used sometimes to force businesses to donate
8. Lack of political will to take any steps in this direction
Electoral Funding - Key Issues
1 Most of the parties are funded by businesses
2 No audited financial statements are made by the parties
3 Black money finds excellent usage during elections
4 ‘Chanda’ is collected in cash from the market on the pretext of better services when in power
5 The details of the funding is not made public
6 No receipts issued for the collections made
7 Details of how much spent is not disclosed
8 No effective mechanism to check if candidates or parties have exceeded the spending limit