Pol parties in 40 nations disclose source of income: Report

Political parties in 40 countries including France, Italy, Germany and Japan are required by law to disclose their source of income, assets and liabilities among other records, says a report by an international NGO.
"In countries like Sweden and Turkey political parties have a voluntary arrangement to open up their records to the people. Parties in some of these countries depend solely on state funding while in a majority of others their counterparts receive both public funding and private contributions," the report by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) said.
The report said countries like Austria, Bhutan, Brazil, Bulgaria, France, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya and Kyrgystan have a system by law for political parties to pro-actively disclose their financial information to people.

Nepal, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Suriname, Sweden, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine and Uzbekistan also provide public disclosure on funding of political parties, it said.
"Countries like the US, UK, Belgium, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, among others, have adopted different models of disclosure of details of political party and election campaign financing.
"However, in India the regulatory bodies are not obliged to pro-actively disclose any financial information that political parties submit to them," said Venkatesh Nayak, Coordinator (Access to Information Programme), CHRI.

He said political parties being in the public domain must be transparent about their functioning.
"The principle of transparency of political financing is increasingly gaining international recognition. Instead of bucking this trend by amending the RTI Act, political parties in India must act on civil society's demand for greater transparency in their affairs.

"This change of mindset is more than likely to restore people's confidence in the political establishment," Nayak added.
The report was prepared in the backdrop of opposition by political parties here to come under Right to Information (RTI) Act after an order by Central Information Commission.