Link political funding to Aadhaar for transparency, says Tewari

Chandigarh, April 29

Former Union minister and senior Congress leader Manish Tewari today favoured the linking of donations to political parties with Aadhaar to bring about more transparency in political funding.

He also said corporates should not be in the business of funding the political process.

“Any donation made to any political party needs to have an address. Therefore, you need to link every donation to Aadhaar, whether a person is donating Re 1 or Rs 5,00,000 in cash. As long as there is Aadhaar linkage whereby the source of funding can be traced, I do not think we really need to go down this entire root of decreasing individual donations from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2,000, which only means you need to print the coupons ten times more,” Tewari said while addressing the 13th annual national conference on electoral and political reforms organised by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

Commenting on the role of corporates in political funding, the Supreme Court advocate said, “Yes, corporates do not have Aadhaar cards. One possibility which is being explored for a long time is with regard to state funding of elections. It is an idea which is worth exploring, but how will one ensure that no private funding takes place.”

“Corporates are in the business of earning profits for their shareholders. They should not be in the business of funding the political process,” he said.

The Congress leader, however, emphasised that transparency in political funding could be achieved if political parties were brought within the ambit of the Right to Information Act (RTI).

The former Ludhiana MP also described the electoral bonds and restricting cash donations to political parties to Rs 2,000 as “non-starters”.

“Electoral bonds are non-starters because the RBI would know who the purchaser of the bond is, and then the government will be able to have information regarding where the bond has gone. The lowering of threshold from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2,000 is nothing at all. It means that the printer will earn more by printing more money. Both these things are complete non-starters,” he said. —PTI