Campaign Finance Reforms in India: Issues and Challenges

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Campaign Finance Reforms in India: Issues and Challenges Mr. Anil Bairwal, National Coordinator, (ADR) Association for Democratic Reforms A lot of things have already been said about criminalisation, about political parties, the need to bring more transparency and inner-party democracy. I would like to touch upon a couple of other points. One thing is about ticketdistribution. This goes to the core of this money-power issue. The tickets are given by political parties to people knowing that these are the people who can spend more money than others. At least this time a lot of candidates were named well in advance. But there are times when till the last moment, you do not know to which political party a particular gentleman belongs because he is negotiating with every party; he is probably trying to join the party from which he can get the ticket with the least money. It again goes down to the need to regulate the functioning of political parties. Mr. Mendiratta said a lot of proposals have been sent to the Government over the years; several commissions have been set up. But I think political parties have not done their due; what people were hoping them to do. I am also not sure what they would do if some recommendations were to go from here. Mr. Arun gave the example of Kerala where helicopters were not used. The only thing that works with the political parties is public pressure. I think State funding would isolate political parties from voters. To some extent, I think they are already detached from the masses. State funding would detach them even more because they would not have to look for funding. Some political parties now say that they don't take funds from big business, they concede that they are taking money from common people. So, if we say, “You get this percentage of votes, we will give you this amount of money”, they will sit back and relax. The third issue is that political parties need money. That is for sure. They cannot carry out the functions that they are supposed to carry out without money. Now the question is whether the State should fund them, or whether we should make other provisions to bring in white money. I agree that we need to tighten the www.orfonline.org 25
ORF Seminar Series system instead of bringing in State money; nobody is going to control the current happenings. They will continue to happen. But maybe we could find a way to increase the component of white money in the electoral process so that it just does not thrive on black money alone. The Election Commission is a body with constitutional status but it does not even have the right to make election rules. Every time they have to make a minor change they have to send their request to the Law Ministry. Even the report about political parties from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India has been sent to the ministry. The ministry has been sitting on it and it does not matter that it is a Congress Minister right now; the BJP has done similar things while in power in the past. I think most parties play the same game. Finally, I would just like to comment on disclosures. A lot of political leaders don't like disclosures. But there is a need to bring in more disclosures. One of the disclosures is of register of interest which is currently in the Rajya Sabha. The Political Ethics Committee decided not to make it public and CEC had to issue a compliance notice. When we are talking about probity and how to bring in better candidates and better people into the system, the Lok Sabha still does not have anything related to register of interest. Mr. Rudy was talking about separating Legislative and Executive functions, and how to make it less attractive for people to come in into the political system. One way may be disclosures, particularly for elected representatives, like in some other countries. In the US, every Senator's income-tax returns are on his website. From ADR, we have asked for the income-tax returns of 20 MPs whose assets have increased the most between 2004 and 2009. All the 20 MPs have said they will not disclose and the appeal is currently pending with the CEC. Things happen here only if the CEC comes in, or a court comes in. I think all of us are looking forward to a time when political parties will pro-actively take some steps to reduce the incidence of some of these problems. 26 www.orfonline.org
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