On Sooperarticles Publication By TRILOK SINGH

http://www.sooperarticles.com/news-society-articles/economics-articles/why-electoral-funding-present-fountainhead-corruption-1618796.html

“Leadership is not about the next election, it’s about the next upcoming generation.”, Simon sinek.

As a citizen of India we proud of our Indian Democracy but few of us bother to fund a political party of our choice.. It is very hard to articulate or imagine a present developed or developing political structure or so called ‘system’ that can do without its political funding, digitizing and institutionalizing parties and election effectively rooted in social, political, economic and cultural cleavages with voter alignments too.

Generally, it is crucial that an ‘Election Agency’ cannot be part and parcel of the government and should be insulate from the governmental influences of any layers or levels. So, it automatically becomes ‘Centralised Election Agency’. Such kind of agency may provides the opportunities to learn from the experiences of different sub National elections to the ruling party. i.e., In 2006 West Bengal Assembly Elections..

Following the former chief election commissioner of India, Dr. SY. Quraishi, when you expands crores in election, you have to collects crores. So with the same light; Problems of Bound Schemes, Fund collection, and Expending the money beyond the legal unit are the growing causes of dirty Corruption in electoral politics.. Former CEC coined, why electoral funding at present is the fountainhead of corruption & how to contain it? While the polling for the 02-phase elections in the Gujarat, having total 182 assembly seats, will take place on Dec 9 and 14 and votes will be counted on Dec 18…

What could be a best way forward area or alternatives with the same regard? Giving the RO this power seems logistically efficient but also provides massive room for electoral malpractices, more so when the ROs are not from the Election Commission of India and are mere employees under the state government. While Dr. SY. Quraishi said that, ROs are senior and Responsible officers who have been conducting flawless elections for decade..

Concerns, Lok sabha and assembly elections were held simultaneously until the mid-1960s, but the premature dissolution of state assemblies in subsequent years disturbed the cycle. In several instances, the Lok Sabha also suffered the same fate..

One India, one election is an very interesting concept but weather it will decrease the evil that the Nation/Government wants to get rid of needs to be debated thoroughly. To be sure, there are multiple issues will need to be addressed if the country intends to move in this direction. The suggestions/ideas of different stakeholders will have to be debated in order to build political consensus around the above idea. May, this will help save public money, it will be very big relief for political parties that are always in campaign mode, also relief for election commission.

Regional parties will be more opposed to the idea than national parties because there is always tendency for voters to vote the same party in power in the state and at the centre in case the Lok Sabha polls and the state elections are held together. We also need to look at local or panchayat level too (three level) as PM Narendra Modi flag the issue.

During election process, the bureaucracy or Administration of the state government dealing with elections is provisionally placed under the election commission of India. Further, the Indian electoral system has thrown up a numerous problems that have raised some discontent and controversy. i.e., Recent EVM issue and also the major backdrops of First-Past-the-Post system of election is that, percentage of votes or ratios..

Dr. Quraishi, “I have checked with EC about allegations of outsourcing of EVM checking. I am told there is absolutely no outsourcing. It’s all in-house with multilevel checks further tightened recently e.g. Cctv, webcasting, pol party agents’ presence, mock polls, etc. Very reassuring”. He added.

In more recent years, the articulation of variety of cleavages has lead to another kind of artificial problems like ‘Gujarat Patel Reservation’, ‘Film padmavati controversy’, Extreme, radical and aggressive Nationalism, Soft Hindutva Vs Hard Hindutva and much more..

As you know that, in Budget speech on February 1, Finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced lowering the limit of donations to political parties from a single source to Rs 2,000 and added that parties would be entitled to receive donations by cheque or digital mode from their donors. Further, “even 70 years after independence, the country has not been able to evolve a transparent method of funding political parties which is vital to the system of free and fair elections.”

So, Finance Minister of India statement indicates that, “an attempt was made in the past by amending the provisions of the Representation of the People Act, the Companies Act and the Income Tax Act to incentivise donations by individuals, partnership firms, HUFs and companies to political parties.” Both, donor and the donee were granted exemption from payment of tax if the accounts were transparently maintained and returns were filed with the competent authorities..

Battle of free goods and Services like free laptop, tv, Mobile, Wifi and much more are very competitive in election environment and high class facility for political party too. i.e., helicopters for election companion, high security are also very competitive with regard to election companion environment. In Short, luxury facilities for politicians or parties, hi-tech buses or so called ‘Rath Yatra’ for Election companion, the Raising luxury quotient becomes a new trending method of Political Parties. The cost of the refurbished bus can vary from Rs 90 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore depending on the facilities desired..

The BJP is using four plus re-modelled Eicher Skyline tourist buses for its Parivartan Yatras, worth about Rs 25 lakh apiece. While Rahul Gandhi for his Deoria-Delhi Yatra in September 2016, used an Rs 1-crore worth Isuzu luxury bus refurbished by Dileep Chhabaria’s DC Design. However, demonitisation and GST also becomes the important concerns in order to cycling political fundings in electoral politics. May, India needs electoral reform in a such time with appropriate direction or mechanism to get rid about the mentioned concerns.

WRITER IS WITH, MA, POLITICAL SCIENCE (2015-17), KIRORI MAL COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF DELHI. AND CEO AND FOUNDER OF IASMIND AND THE YOUTH DARPAN, AN OPEN PLATFORM FOR COMMUNITY.