Electoral bonds will only legitimise corporate influence,

The CPI(M) said today that electoral bonds for political funding as outlined by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would only legitimise corporate influence and bribery in the political system.

The scheme will facilitate the takeover of the political system by big money, former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said in an editorial in the forthcoming issue of the party organ, 'People's Democracy'.

"The system of electoral bonds will only facilitate corporate funding to the ruling party and open the way for legitimising bribery and corruption. The scheme is nothing but a way of harnessing corporate funding for the ruling party and facilitating the takeover of the political system by big money," Karat has claimed.
 

In the editorial, he has said that the scheme will allow "companies to have the incentive to provide huge contributions to the ruling party to earn its favour".

Criticising the move to not mention the names of the donors in the bonds, he said it can be used to make a donation only to certain political parties and will only make kickbacks legal.

He also said that the other aspect of the electoral bond scheme which he claims will open the way for foreign companies to fund political parties in India without it becoming public.

"In the Finance Bill of 2016, the government had amended the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) to treat contributions by Indian subsidiaries of foreign companies as funding from Indian sources. With this amendment of the FCRA, foreign corporate funding to political parties was legalised," he said.

Accusing the Modi government of putting "efforts to establish a nexus with the corporates for political funding", the Left leader said that the CPI(M) would "resolutely oppose" such move.

"The CPI(M), for one, will not accept the electoral bond scheme. The Party has consistently opposed corporate funding to political parties. An important aspect of electoral reforms would be to prohibit corporate funding to political parties," Karat has emphasised.

He has suggested that corporates should be allowed to donate to a state-run trust which will utilise such money for state funding of elections and all donations to political parties, should be recorded with the identity, address and PAN card details of the donors.