Activists approach Ansari over 'alarming' Finance Bill sections

Activists on Wednesday raised serious concerns over the government's use of 'Money Bill' tags to push through important legislations. They approached Vice President Hamid Ansari questioning the legitimacy of the government's approach.

They said the use of the 'Money Bill' route to get passed the provisions of the Finance Bill 2017 "allows for unprecedented surveillance of every citizen and massive invasion of privacy".

In a letter to Ansari, over 200 activists and eminent personalities, including jurist Fali Nariman and filmmaker and activist Girish Karnad, expressed their shock over the Narendra Modi government's use of the 'Money Bill' route to push through important legislations in Parliament.

A legislation tagged by the government as the 'Money Bill', if passed by the Lok Sabha, does not need the approval of the Rajya Sabha. The Narendra Modi government lacks majority in the Rajya Sabha, and can be embarrassed if the opposition debates and amends important bills.

The activists in their letter said: "These (Finance Bill 2017 provisions) can be used by governments at different levels to target political opponents and dissidents, as well as others."

"It enables data sharing even by private companies, it renders all citizens vulnerable to identity theft, fraud, cyber-piracy, data breaches and other uses of their personal data with very serious security implications," they said.

"This undemocratic strategy has already been employed in the case of the Aadhaar Bill, even though it contains many provisions that go well beyond issues relating to taxation and money appropriations of the government, which will directly affect every citizen of the country in numerous ways."

They said that the protection and cyber-security provisions in the Bill were "inadequate" and did not match up to international standards.

The activists said several important features included in the Finance Bill, 2017, deserved to be independently discussed and debated.

"The Bill contains several provisions that will drastically increase black money and corruption," they said, pointing out the provision enabling political parties to receive unlimited and anonymous funding from corporate entities and from abroad.

"It is well known that political funding is probably the most important source of corruption in the country. Making it more opaque flies in the face of claims to greater transparency and will make matters even worse than they are at present with terrible implications for electoral democracy in the future," they said.

The Finance Bill 2017 also gives sweeping powers without accountability to the Income Tax Department, which can encourage extortion at all levels.

Pointing to the "serious implications for democratic functioning and financial security of all citizens", the activists sought Ansari's intervention to stop the illegitimate classifying of important bills as Money Bills.

"We appeal to you to at the very least allow extensive and uninterrupted discussions into every aspect of the Bill in the Upper House and put all these on record and do everything else in your power to ensure that the practice of by-passing important Bills by illegitimately classifying them as Money Bills is immediately stopped," they said.

--IANS

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