Campaign Finance Reforms in India: Issues and Challenges

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Campaign Finance Reforms in India: Issues and Challenges contribute by cheques of ` 19,999, you don't have to disclose it to the Election Commission as it is less than ` 20,000. So, this is also farcical. If you have a strict system, every contributor has to be identified and the contribution recorded. So, even if you don't have expenditure limits, and you have a very strict system of reporting and disclosure, you can clean up the system to a considerable extent. The other way is to introduce public-funding of some kind. This can be designed in various ways. I would encourage our guests from Germany to say something about this. We could learn from the systems that exist in Germany and other countries in Europe. It could be on a matching grant basis, which is not totally divorced from the people as you said. If it is just dependent on voteshare, you don't have to go out to the people to raise money but you can say that if you raise X amount of money we will match it, 1:1 or 1:2. Give them some incentive to show their credibility in terms of raising money, in terms of masssupport, in terms of getting contributions and match it with State funds to some extent. Along with this, as others have said here, introducing strict accountability measures and internal democracy within political parties has to be mandatory because you cannot give a State fund to, say, a leader who is totally unaccountable to his party. You can have different packages designed. The totality of the package and the incentives is what really matters. Participant: What about separating legislative functions from the Executive? Chair: I don't think in a parliamentary system that can be done. In a presidential system there is separation of powers. If you are a member of Congress in the US, you cannot become a member of the Executive. Here in India the ministers are drawn from the Legislature, from Parliament or the State assemblies. www.orfonline.org 29
ORF Seminar Series Question & Answer Session Mr. Mohan Guruswamy: In the early part of the Republic, after elections the defeated candidates could file petitions challenging the election on excessivespending. There have been plenty of cases, like the celebrated case of Dr. Channa Reddy, the then Union Minister of Steel. Within six months of becoming Minister, his election was thrown out for corrupt practices. So, there was an incentive for candidates to collect information about one another and be ready for court cases. Now the judicial process is so long and extended that these things are never resolved. I have the case of a friend of mine, Ram Bahadur Singh, who contested the parliamentary elections from Bihar in 1984. He led in all Assembly segments, but was declared lost owing to political pressure on the Returning Officer. He fought for five years, he won the case after the term of Parliament was over. You need to combine all what has been said here with quick judicial processes. Maybe you need separate fast-track courts; within 3-4 months you should have a verdict. Otherwise, people are denied their right to representation. Dr. Lukas, Political Counsellor, German Embassy: I am from the German Embassy and I would like to take up your invitation to say a few words on how we deal with the system or with the parties in general. We don't have campaignfinancing, we have party-financing. We have a mix of ways in which we have party-financing; we have public-financing by the State, financing by membership fees, financing through donors, donations by private persons as well as corporate donations. The public finance depends on the party but if you look up the website of the German Parliament, public-financing is limited to somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent for each party. That is a major part of financing but it is not the bulk. The bulk actually is made up either by membership fees or by donations. Some parties, I have to add, also have some 30 www.orfonline.org
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